


Variables

by SciFiDVM



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Bass is resurrected by the nanites, F that 2 cities and underground treasure and more Rass crap Rambo talked about, F/M, My version of Season 3, Sequel to Constant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:47:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SciFiDVM/pseuds/SciFiDVM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after the events of Constant, the nanites resurrect Bass to help them fight a new enemy and task Charlie with making sure that he lives up to the potential they see in him. Eventual Charloe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I almost view this as a spin off of Revolution, as Bass and Charlie take on new roles facing a new (and markedly more science fiction-y) menace. I guess you could figure out what's going on here without having read Constant, but I wouldn't really advise it.

After that fateful day on the bridge, the next few months were spent mopping up the last resilient Patriot footholds. But with their plots foiled and their true nature exposed, California and Texas both eagerly joined in the hunt. Less than three months after Bass’s sacrifice, the khaki stain on American history had been entirely expunged.

The nanites had started as a problem, but something about the sudden success of the resistance movement seemed to make them find new faith in their creators. As if the desire to end the fighting was a twist they hadn’t anticipated. They’d returned Priscilla’s control of her body in short order and seemed to have taken the role of a silent observer once again. They didn’t restore the power, but they no longer interfered in people’s day to day lives. For all they could tell, the nanotech’s experiments and attempts at playing God had ceased.

The populace in general and the extended Matheson family itself did their best to settle down. It was easier for some than for others. Charlie in particular seemed to feel antsy and restless all the time, like another storm was coming, the mounting clouds just beyond the horizon. Everyone else chalked it up to the fact that she’d spent most of her adult life now fighting, and assumed it would just take her time to relax and adapt to the new way of life. Everyone, that is, except Aaron. He refused to ever mention it to another living soul, but he knew Charlie was right. Somehow he could just feel a new threat looming in the distance. He didn’t know how he knew, but he could tell. The nano were scared. In all their experimentation and their rage, they’d either done something or they’d found something. Either way, Aaron doubted that their decision to regroup and take the past six months off were a coincidence. They’d made a tactical retreat, and he could only quake in his own personal horror at what they might be cooking up as a defensive weapon to use against something that scared an omnipotent technology that could cause anything with molecules to spontaneously combust at will. He just hoped that it was something he’d never have to encounter the likes of.

 

…..

 

One night, on the side of a west Texan hill and next to a deep gorge that not long ago been spanned by an enormous train trestle, a small swarm of green fireflies danced near the tree line.

A pair of eyes slowly blinked open and took a moment to adjust to fading dusk light and the shifting glow of the insect swarm. Just as the world above stopped spinning in a horribly disorienting fashion, the bulk of the green fireflies seemed to suddenly dart away. Curious eyes watched as a red firefly buzzed in a slow advance. As it approached, a number of the green fireflies reappeared and seemed to be attempting to block the crimson bug’s path. Without even slowing down, the red firefly bore straight through the small cluster in its way, and the green fireflies instantly lost their glow and dropped dead to the dusty Texas ground. Unimpeded, the red firefly reached its target and settled on the section of artificially pigmented flesh exposed on the extremity of the newly woken figure. The red bug was studied momentarily, before a hand quickly smacked against flesh and crushed the glowing insect.

“The fuck?” Bass murmured, still slightly disoriented as he flicked the smashed firefly carcass from where it had landed on his encircled M tattoo, which had now somehow returned to his left forearm. Then he began swatting at the drove of green fireflies that had appeared at his side as soon as the red one had been squashed. They seemed to be inspecting the carcass where he’d flicked it a few feet away.

“They come in different colors now? How long have I been out, and what have Beardy McGee and his sexbot girlfriend been up to?” Bass talked to himself and shook his head, trying to get orientated. “Aww dammit. And who took my clothes? Miles! Are you out there? This isn’t funny, man.” As he stood and looked around fruitlessly for his clothes, Bass couldn’t help but notice the little swarm of green fireflies following him.

“What do you want?” Bass posed the question angrily to the glowing bugs that he knew represented the nanotech. He spun instantly when he heard an unexpected voice from the trees behind him.

“I think they want our help. Well, yours at least.”

Charlie stepped forward out of the shadows and tossed him a pair of jeans.

“What makes you think that?” He questioned as he pulled on the jeans that seemed a bit too tight and a few inches too long. They must be Miles’s, he reasoned. He wondered why, if she’d taken the time to bring him pants, she hadn’t thought to actually bring his. He also wondered why it wasn’t weirder between them that she’d just walked up on him naked. Though that seemed to be the least important question at the moment.

“Because they told me to come out here to meet you. And to bring pants…” She shook her head slightly at the last part.

“And that’s a big deal because?” Bass questioned.

“Because you’ve been dead for six months.”


	2. Willoughby, 10 miles

_“Because you’ve been dead for six months.”_

That had not been the answer he’d expected. Bass searched his memory for some recollection of a potentially fatal event. He couldn’t remember exactly how he’d ended up naked on the side of a hill, but if he was going to be honest with himself, this wasn’t the weirdest place he’d ever woken up naked with no memory of how he’d gotten there. Though usually those situations also involved a merciless hangover and a naked woman… or two. Here he had neither. He found that unnerving, and worried that it meant that Charlie’s claim could somehow be true. But it couldn’t be true because here he was, alive and well. Though he couldn’t very well explain how the burnt tissue on his forearm had healed and turned back into his distinctive tattoo. And as he ran through a mental inventory, he realized that a few other scars were gone as well. So too was the blind spot at the edge of his peripheral vision and the arthritis in his right knee. As weird as it was, he felt good. How could he have died and ended up feeling better?

Charlie could tell that Bass seemed to be having trouble with the bomb she’d just dropped on him. She knew he’d need more details if he was going to accept what happened, but the last thing she wanted was to relive those last gut wrenching moments as he’d said his goodbyes and walked off to his death. At their worst, he’d been her arch nemesis, the cause of the most horrific tragedies in her life and the focus of her deepest loathing. Somehow that had changed since she’d hunted him down in New Vegas, but even at their best they weren’t what anyone would have considered friends. They had tolerated each other, developed a begrudging respect even. It hadn’t seemed like more than that until those last two days leading up to her having to stand there and helplessly watch it all slip away through her fingers like so much sand.

“Six months? You sure about that?” He asked, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Give or take a few days.” Charlie offered. Really? The amount of time that he’d been dead bothered him more than the mere fact that he’d been resurrected?

“’Cause from what I hear, the nanotech brought Aaron back in a couple hours and took care of that girl he was with almost instantly when that creepy mad scientist went all Mengele on them. Why’d it take them six months to bring me back?” He sounded a little insulted.

“My guess is that they were having trouble finding all the pieces.” Charlie shrugged.

“Excuse me? Pieces?” His voice had become unnecessarily menacing.

Charlie sighed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

He thought for a moment, obviously digging through his memory, or whatever was left of it. “We realized that the Patriots were about to gas Willoughby. Miles and I put Neville down for the count after he drew on you, and then we all started off to go save the day.” The last bit came out sounding a tad sarcastic.

“You’re missing about two days.” She informed him. “At the end, you got hit in the chest by a stray bullet while we were trying to stop a train from crossing the bridge that used to be right there.” She pointed at the gaping crag to his left. “You knew you weren’t gonna make it and we had no other way to stop the train. You blew the bridge with a couple of grenades right in the middle.”

He looked across the gorge to the other side, so very far away. “There’s no way I could have thought I’d be able to get off that bridge. Why would I have risked that?”

“You knew you wouldn’t make it.” She looked into his eyes, seeing the confusion and a certain hardness in them. He really didn’t remember the last two days of his life or everything that had changed in that time. “You sacrificed yourself to save us, to save everyone.”

“Yeah. That doesn’t really sound like me. Don’t think anyone, especially not one of you lot, has ever accused me of being the hero type.”

“Things… changed for you in those last couple days.” She offered ambiguously.

“Well, you’re gonna have to tell me about that some time. But right now, I’m kinda done standing around in the open half naked. How about we head back to wherever you all are holed up, and let Miles decide where the fuck we’re going from here.”

“I can’t do that.” She said flatly.

“Well I’m pretty sure that you can. Just take me to Miles, Charlie.” He couldn’t remember the last two days of his life, but he sure as hell could remember those days that followed the ones he’d spent tied up with her in an empty swimming pool. It was like de ja vu all over again.

“It’s the nano.” Charlie tried to explain. “I don’t know how I know, but it’s like the same way I knew to show up here tonight. They don’t want anyone else to know that you’re back.”

“Yeah, well, the nano can go fuck themselves.” He growled.

“Bass, I wouldn’t…” Charlie warned.

The swarm of fireflies had returned and were hovering just behind him. When he turned abruptly and ended up with them in his face, he swatted at them. Then there was a flash of bright green light that knocked Bass back a few feet and landed him flat on his back. He opened his eyes and winced. Charlie was standing above him, looking down at him with an “I told you so” evident in her smirk.

“Since when have you called me Bass?” He groaned from the ground as she extended a hand to help him up. He took the offered hand with a small amount of disdain at needing the assistance.

“You really don’t remember any of it, do you?” She said, her voice sad. “Those whole two days… that night… the night you and I… when we…” she dropped her hands protectively to her lower abdomen.

His eyes looked huge and terrified as she went on. Just before he looked like he was about to pass out, she let a smile tug at her lips. “Gotcha!”

Gulping down a few large relieved breaths, he panted “That wasn’t funny, Charlotte.”

“Your face _was_ pretty funny just then.” She smiled at him and started leading the way back towards Willoughby.

He began to follow her, well aware that the small cloud of fireflies was trailing behind him. “Well, your face is always funny looking.” He jabbed teasingly. He was rewarded with a notable shock hitting him in the ass. “What the fuck!” He turned and started futilely swinging at the fireflies.

“I don’t think they like it when we fight.” Charlie surmised.

“That wasn’t fighting!” He exclaimed towards the bugs. “That was me being a sarcastic ass hole. Big difference. Figure it out, because it’s gonna happen a lot, and if you can’t handle that, you might as well put me back in the ground you god damned glow-y termites.”

“Probably shouldn’t tempt them.” Charlie smiled at him. He sneered back.

They walked on in silence for a while and the fireflies eventually trailed off.

“So are you ever going to tell me what actually happened during those two days that suddenly turned me into one of the freaking Avengers?”

“Not tonight.” Charlie answered without turning around. “You’ve already got enough to deal with for one night. And who knows, maybe some of it will come back to you on your own.”

“But at least tell me that you were joking about everything before. We didn’t…”

“Seriously? That’s what you’re hung up on? I tell you that the nanotech brought you back from the dead after six months because they need your help, and you’re just trying to remember if we banged one out in the forty-eight hours you can’t remember before you died?”

“Yes?”

“What is wrong with you?” She shook her head. “I’m starting to think that when the nanites put you back together, there were a couple of pieces of your brain that they couldn’t find and got left out.”

“And you’re deflecting the question.”

“Deflect this, asshole. No. We did not have sex before you died. Why would you even think that was an option?”

“When you showed up earlier, you didn’t seem particularly surprised to see me naked.”

Charlie rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that surprising. I figured that the nanites didn’t tell me to bring you clothes because you were gonna want wardrobe options after being resurrected. And let’s be honest, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You’ve seen one naked Monroe, you’ve pretty much seen ‘em all.”

He deflated a bit at that. She managed to bruise his ego and remind him of the time he found her and his son together in one fell swoop. “How is Connor?” He asked almost reluctantly.

“He’s hanging in there.” She offered honestly. “Had a bit of a rough time at first. I think he was equal parts pissed at you for dying and leaving him without the Republic, and just plain lonely. Miles has been keeping an eye on him. There’s still some resentment there on Connor’s part, but he’s coming around.”

Bass nodded silently. He hesitated, but he couldn’t not ask. “And Miles?”

Charlie smiled. “He’s good. Real good even.”

Bass forced a smile, but couldn’t hide that fact that he seemed a little hurt.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Charlie corrected. “He misses you all the time, but it’s different. He tells stories about all the stupid stunts you guys used to pull when you were kids and stuff like that. It’s good memories. And he made sure that everyone knew what really happened on that bridge, that you saved the entire country. He’s proud of you.”

Bass was more than a little surprised at her candor. Something must have happened if she was willing to talk with him like this and to have caused such a change in his rocky relationship with his once best friend.

She continued, “And I think the quiet life actually suits him. I’d thought for sure that he’d go nuts with no one to fight, but he and Mom have kind of just settled down. They all seem… content.”

He picked up on the slight undertones of jealousy in that last sentence and the fact that she’d said “they” and not “we”. He wanted to know why it was that she wasn’t happy and content like the rest of her family, but found another part of her statement to be more important at the moment. “What do you mean, ‘no one to fight’?”

“Oh yeah. We won. The Patriots are gone.” She added as if she were describing the weather.

“How the hell did that happen in just six months?”

“Miles was right. Stopping that train took their legs out from under them. Once California and Texas realized that they were being played, everybody united and they didn’t stand a chance.”

“Wait, you mean the train that I…” He looked at her disbelievingly.

“That’s right.” Charlie smiled at him. “You’ve gone down in the history books as the bona fide hero that started the beginning of the end for the Patriots. We told them all the truth about Randall and the nukes, and this time they believed us. Carver officially pardoned you and everything. Posthumously, of course.”

“Well that’s something, I guess.” Bass seemed a little overwhelmed.

Charlie took the hint and quieted. They walked together in a comfortable silence for the next couple hours.

They were ambling, side by side down the all too familiar once black-topped road that lead into Willoughby when Bass spotted it. He snorted as the little green sign with white lettering came into view.

Willoughby  
10 Miles

“I know, right?” Charlie spared a sideways glance and a smile at him. She knew exactly what had caught his eye.

“How many times have you and I trekked past this thing now?” He almost laughed.

“I’ve honestly lost count.” She said with a smile.

He couldn’t help but realize how drastically different their situation was this time as they passed the sign than on the previous occasions. The first time they’d neared Willoughby he was still half afraid that she’d stab him to death in his sleep at night. Now they were… What were they? He couldn’t remember two apparently very important days in their history, but obviously they had been enough to leave them as friends of some sort. He wasn’t going to complain. He’d never had any reason to dislike the girl, beyond her trying to kill him. Though that was relatively justified, so he didn’t hold it against her. He’d actually admired her in some respects from the first time he’d laid eyes on her in Philadelphia. After working together the past fall, he’d even developed a pretty decent respect for her. She could fight, and not just “for a girl”. She’d also saved his ass from certain death twice, at the pointy end of a needle wielded by her grandfather once and again in that cage in New Vegas. He’d always managed to find some form of convenient truce with her more easily than any of the others when needed. They just seemed to understand where the other was coming from a little more easily than with the others. So now it wasn’t that surprising that things had somehow gone to the next level. He didn’t feel like it was going out very far on a limb to say that they were friends at this point. The sensation was relatively foreign to him, but not unwelcomed. She was enough her uncle’s niece to make it somewhat familiar. At the end of the day, if the nanites had decided that he was going to be brought back to be their Dark Knight, they could have certainly picked a worse Robin.


	3. Home

Charlie had led them to a small house about a mile outside the northern gates of Willoughby. Bass silently followed as she entered the house and went about lighting a few lamps. She made her way through the house with complete ease in the total darkness, and Bass realized that she must have been staying in the new place for a while now.

“Surprised you’re not staying back in town at casa de Matheson.” Bass threw out thoughtlessly once there was enough light in the living room to see by. He made his way over to the couch and plopped down, not taking his eyes off Charlie as he rubbed his feet. He really wished the nano had also told her to bring footwear if they were going to have to walk twenty miles.

Charlie stopped her errant straightening at his remark. She hadn’t exactly been expecting a house guest and she wasn’t what anyone would call a clean freak by any stretch. She was mostly just glad that she hadn’t had any underwear lying around in plain view when the nano had sent her on the emergency mission to retrieve their new ally. She leaned against the doorframe that separated the living room from the kitchen and regarded him as he made himself at home on her couch. “After everything, I… I needed some space.”

“Miles and your mom aren’t exactly quiet…” Bass shrugged knowingly.

Sure, that had been part of Charlie’s reason for getting her own place. There were some other important factors, but right now she wondered what would possess the man on her couch to throw out that assumption.

Seeing her confused look, Bass smiled. “You know this isn’t anything new, right? I’ve had the privilege of being stuck down the hall or in the adjacent hotel room from those two since before you were born.”

“Good to know some things never change.” She said it somewhat sarcastically and returned an understanding shrug.

She watched him as he surveyed his surroundings. He seemed more at ease than she could ever remember seeing him. She wondered if it was some influence of the nano tech that made him relax or if he was recognizing the dwelling. Yes, when she had decided to move out on her own she had taken up residence in the safe house where they had brought Bass to recover from his not entirely lethal injection. It wasn’t out of any sentimental reason, she reminded herself. They had picked the house as their safe house for good reason – location, defensibility, structural integrity, working hand pump in the back. Good vacant houses were becoming a hot commodity after the defeat of the Patriots. Charlie had simply reclaimed what her family had already set up. She had cleaned it out, got some new furniture, and tried to make it her own. Despite the growing unrest she’d felt ever since their defeat of the Patriots and the disappearance of the nano, she had tried to convince herself to settle down and make her home here. Ever since she’d abandoned her lunch box of post cards en route to Philadelphia, she was not one to collect a lot of sentimental clutter, but she thought she’d done a good enough job of making the house a home. That was until the last time Miles stopped by a few weeks earlier and commented that the place looked like a frat boy’s dorm, just without all the nude girly posters. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she could guess by the context that she wouldn’t be a candidate for one of those old Better Homes and Gardens magazines from before the blackout that were still lying around some of the shops in town.

“You tired?” Charlie asked. “Still an hour or two until sunrise if you want to rest for a while.”

The truth was, she was tired, and not just from the round trip forty mile of walking she’d done in the past day. Her brain needed to process what had just happened, and she was far too shocked and conflicted in her emotions for that to happen with her awake.

Again Bass shrugged. “Yeah. I could probably sleep for a bit.”

“Blanket’s in the closet by the door. Out house is out back just past the pump.” She tried to make it sound casual, like she frequently entertained house guests. She also tried to ignore the weird awkwardness that she felt pooling in her gut since he had seemed to happily accept their new odd scenario. She remembered how pissed and petty he’d been after Duncan had awarded her the mercenaries instead of him in New Vegas. Now the nano put her in charge of looking after him and he seemed to be completely ok with that. It was unsettling. He supposedly didn’t remember their last two days together, during which their sketchy truce had become an actual friendship, yet he was acting like he remembered it all and they’d spent the last six months as trusted friends. She didn’t know what to make of it.

He just nodded at her.

“I’m gonna turn in then.” She nearly stammered as she turned to the other door off the living room, the one that led to the cottage’s single bedroom.

“Goodnight Charlotte.” His voice seemed sincere, which only made Charlie feel more uncomfortable.

“Night Monroe.” She’d resorted to using his surname in an effort to force some distance between them. The exchange reminded her of one of their first nights begrudgingly traveling together from the Plains to Willoughby, but the tone was all wrong. He was just being too accepting and too congenial. And he was entirely too alive and in her house.

Charlie carried one of the lanterns with her to her room, closing the door behind her. She pulled off her boots and jeans, and swapped her tank top for an oversized t shirt before crawling into bed. She stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes as she listened to the sounds of the closet door squealing on its hinges as he retrieved the spare bedding and the creaking of old springs as he settled back onto the rickety couch. Then she blew out the lantern and tried to force her mind to rest, and to forget that the man whose death she had mourned deeply but silently for the last one hundred eighty-two days was currently a few yards away on her couch.

…..

Bass hadn’t actually been tired, which he found surprising. He’d wondered if it was some kind of side effect of his resurrection. The nano tech had wanted his help and found it feasible to reanimate him. Had they also slipped in some upgrades while they were at it? They had messed with his scars and cleared up some of his arthritis. It wasn’t too far outside the realm of possibilities to imagine that maybe they’d jacked him up to where he no longer needed sleep.

He’d been all for testing out his new hypothesis, but when he’d looked up at Charlie’s face standing in that doorway, he’d realized that she was tired. There was no doubt that she was obviously taking her new job as keeper of the nano’s secret weapon seriously. If he had stayed up, she would have felt it necessary to stay up with him. So, for her sake, he feigned tiredness and went through the motions of pretending that he would sleep on the couch. Laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, it wasn’t long until the physical and emotional exhaustion caught up to him and he wasn’t pretending anymore.

He wasn’t sure when he’d actually fallen asleep, but he knew that he must have because he was dreaming. It seemed weird to have that level of self-awareness while dreaming, but somehow his brain could distinguish that he wasn’t conscious.

_He was in a familiar field chasing Miles. They were kids and they were playing. He felt happy, at peace. Then young Miles stopped and looked at him, looked up at him like Bass wasn’t in the same juvenile state as his friend._

_“We’re brothers, Bass. Always.”_

_“Always.” Bass answered._

_Then there was a loud whistle and he was standing alone on a train trestle. He watched himself from a slightly detached position, as if he were some omnipotent observer rather than the subject of the dream. He saw himself produce two grenades, pull the pins, wait a few seconds, and then drop them. The portion of himself watching these events unfold felt panicked, terrified at knowing what was about to happen. Though he also knew that whatever version of him that was down on those tracks was still at peace. He was as content as he’d been playing with his childhood friend. He was doing something that he knew with all his heart was the right choice. Then the grenades detonated._

Bass woke in a panic, arms flailing and legs tangling in the sheet he’d haphazardly draped over himself. He lurched to the side and fell from the couch, landing with a resounding thud on the hardwood. As he struggled to right himself he could have sworn that he’d seen a flash of static glaring across the screen of the boxy 1980’s television set across the room that Charlie had set up as a serving table. But it was gone before he could be sure. It was also at that moment that Charlie burst out of her room, wearing nothing but an oversized Dallas Cowboys t shirt and brandishing a sword.

Quickly recognizing the source of the commotion, she lowered the sword. Even though she had obviously taken in the situation and was no longer wielding the weapon at him, she still looked more disturbed than the situation warranted.

“Sorry about the racket… bad dream.” He muttered as he extracted himself from the blanket and started to stand.

Charlie extended her non-sword hand to him and helped him to his feet. “What was it?”

“It was nothing.” He brushed himself off and reached down to toss the blanket back on the couch. He didn’t know how to explain what he’d just dreamt.

“It…” Charlie faltered. “It wasn’t nothing. It was that day on the bridge. You just watched yourself die.”

Bass found himself more shaken by Charlie’s words than by anything that had happened in the dream. “How do you…”

“Because I just had the same dream.”

He looked down into her eyes and their stares locked. They were both confused and a little bit frightened. After a beat, Bass turned away. “Probably just a coincidence. I mean, I come back, of course it’s gonna mess with your head. I’m guessing that’s not the first time you’ve relived that moment in your dreams.”

“Yeah I’ve dreamed about it before, but when I see it happen it’s always the same way I actually saw it happen. This time it was your point of view.”

Bass had to admit, that was a little creepy. “How do you know you didn’t just imagine it?”

“Your bullet wound was worse than you told us and you collapsed on the bridge before you could get far enough out for the grenades to work. I thought you weren’t going to make it. Then you somehow miraculously got up and started running to the middle of the bridge. You stopped at exactly the right spot, and I never knew how you found the strength to do it. You were hallucinating. You saw Miles as a kid and you let him lead you out across the bridge.”

Bass’s face went pale.

“I’m right, aren’t I? There’s no way I could know that.” Charlie was staring at him again.

“How did you see my dream?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! It wasn’t a dream, it was a memory.”

“Call it whatever you want. How the hell were you in my head?” He snapped back.

“I don’t know!” Charlie shot out defensively. Then after a moment to think, “It must be the nano. We know they can mess with people’s minds. They want me to help you, so maybe this is how they can help you remember.”

“No offense Charlie, but my dreams are probably not a place you want to be.” His brain had just started to register that she was still standing there in front of him wearing only a t shirt that didn’t quite make it all the way down to mid-thigh. He really hoped the nano would be selective in which parts of his subconscious they would grant her access to.

“I don’t really get the feeling that we’re gonna have much of a choice.”

“Then in that case, you might really want to consider putting on some pants.” He raised an eyebrow at her.

She seemed to only then realize her state of undress. She shot him an angry scowl and then quickly stormed off to her room, slamming the door behind her.

He smiled at how easily he’d flustered her. The girl put up such a tough front, it was fun to watch those rare instances when she realized she was actually just human. Damned if he didn’t feel some kind of affection for her. He didn’t know where the sentiment came from, and wondered if it was a real feeling of friendship born in those forty-eight hours he couldn’t remember and deeply seated in his psyche, or if it was some trick of the nano, an attempt to make him more willing and pliable to follow the orders they were giving him through her. Either way, he had a feeling that this was going to get interesting.


	4. What the nano giveth, the nano can taketh away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Constant and the first chapters of this fic were posted before the finale, I'm going to have to retcon a few little things (like I already had Carver surviving to give Bass his pardon). A lot of the 2 missing days from Bass's memory will cover the events of the finale, but some of it may be a little altered and there will certainly be more that happened beyond the actual episode. All will be revealed in time. I guess I'm just evil like the nano. :)

Charlie slammed the door behind her as she stormed into her room. God, he was such an ass. She had run to help him, fearing the worst, and he made a joke about her choice of pajamas. Or lack there of. She braced herself against her dresser and let her anger deflate. She reminded herself that there were quite a few times over the last six months where she’d missed his disruptive, frustrating presence in her now boring little life enough that she had silently pledged that she would give up just about anything to have him back amongst the living. Now he was, and it seemed a little petty to be wanting to take it all back over some inappropriate teasing. From now on she would remember to pull on boxers with her ratty old t shirts when she slept.

Despite his assertions to the contrary, she knew the most important thing to happen that morning was not her wardrobe, but the fact that they had just had the same dream. That was weird enough on its own, but it wasn’t just a dream. It was his memories from the bridge. She was both excited and a little nervous at the prospect of him getting his memories back. A lot had happened in those two days. She wondered if his reactions to the events in their past would be the same when taken out of context.

Charlie dressed quickly in her usual jeans, tank, and boots. It was late summer in Texas, and while fall was just around the corner, it was still almost unbearably hot outside. After running a brush through her hair and cinching her belt in place, she dug through the recesses of her closet and found the go bags that her family had stored there when it had been their safe house. She dug through Miles’s and pulled out a deep V neck t shirt. As she rifled through the pack looking for socks that would fit Bass, her brain pondered if he would need anything else and came to an awkward screeching halt. Underwear? There was a topic she was not about to breach with her already overly crass house guest. She decided to avoid the concept of clothing all together, threw the t shirt back into the pack and took the whole thing with her out into the living room.

He’d made his way into the kitchen and was leaning against the counter chewing on an apple. She was fairly certain that the smug bastard was actually posing, his stance making his body look long and lean and highlighting the definition of his abdominal muscles clearly evident since he was still shirtless. Though she had no idea who he thought he was trying to impress. She rolled her eyes and tossed the pack at him. Off his questioning look, she explained, “It’s Miles’s old bug out bag. We used to use this place as a safe house and we all stashed stuff here. It should have some clothes that’ll fit you better than anything else around here until I have a chance to get you some of your own.”

He began to rummage through the bag. Charlie shoved him out of the way so she could access the cabinet behind where he had been leaning. As she pulled out a cup and some tea, he teased, “Can’t say I’ve ever had a woman so eager to get me into clothes.”

She froze and looked at him incredulously. “You just went there? Really? It’s too early for your crap, Monroe.”

“What?” He tried to look innocent.

Charlie rolled her eyes. As she turned toward the stove with her mug, she coughed out a muffled “whore.”

She momentarily second guessed her choice to confront his inappropriate innuendo head on, until she heard him break into laughter behind her. She turned to find him nearly doubled over, unable to finish pulling the t shirt over his shoulders he was laughing so hard. She couldn’t help but break into a quiet chuckle as well. So that had really just happened. The formerly deceased former president and general of the Monroe Republic was in her kitchen, laughing at the fact that she’d just called him a whore. If someone had told her two years ago that this would be happening, she would have thought they were entirely insane. Now, with everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, she was wondering if she was the crazy one.

Once the laughter died down Charlie returned to lighting a small fire in the stove to boil some water. She felt the air shift as he advanced behind her more than she heard anything. His hands shot out to grip the edge of the stove on either side of her, essentially pinning her in place. The move was meant to be intimidating, but she had a feeling she knew what he was up to and just couldn’t find him frightening any more.

“Do you have any idea what I did to the last person that spoke to me that way?” His voice was deep and rumbling.

Charlie turned her head so that she was looking in his eyes when she replied, “I’m sure they died a horrible death.” Though her tone may have sounded sarcastic, she really did assume that was the ultimate outcome.

“Their fate ended up something far worse than death.” Then he suddenly dropped the menacing tone. “The bitch is just up the street probably still in bed with your uncle. I mean, personally, I can’t imagine a worse punishment than being saddled with that prick until death do them part. But hey, to each their own.” He smiled at her and she rolled her eyes and shoved his shoulder until he stepped back and allowed her to make her way over to the table. “Sometimes you really are just like your mother.”

She bristled at the comment, though she’d seen it coming. That was her weak spot and not only did he know it, he couldn’t resist jabbing her there. She glared at him, a strong signal that fun time was over, and raised his hands in surrender.

“So what’s our plan for today?” He asked between bites of apple.

“I don’t know.” Charlie replied frankly.

“Come on, the nano chose you to be our fearless leader. Don’t you have a plan?”

“Nope.”

He seemed disappointed, or possibly bored. She wondered if it was a side effect of the resurrection, or if Monroe would have just had a much more difficult time settling down to a quiet life than her uncle had.

“If it weren’t for me, what would you normally be doing today?” He asked curiously.

“Hunt for a while. Take some meat and pelts into town to trade.” She answered honestly.

“That’s what you do now? Every day?” He sounded disgusted.

“Yup.” She answered flatly.

“I’ve seen what you can do, the way you fight. How are you not bored out of your mind?”

She was about to give him the canned reply she’d developed for these situations, where she’d talk about settling down and how nice it was to just live simply and not have to fight. Of course, it was all lies. One look at him told her that he saw right through the lies before she even told them.

“There is nothing else. The war’s over. There’s no more Patriots. The governments have set their boundaries and made peace. No more evil empires to overthrow.” She shot a sneer at him and he just rolled his eyes in return before she continued, “The war clans won’t come within a hundred miles of Miles Matheson and Willoughby. This is all that’s left.”

“What about the military? Fight with the Rangers?” Bass suggested.

“I spent the last two years fighting with only Miles to give me orders. If I joined the Rangers I’d have to start at the bottom and work my way up. I don’t want to spend years being bossed around by idiots with less combat experience than me as we catch purse thieves and cattle rustlers.” She knew that if anyone would understand that fact, it would be Bass.

“You’re a Matheson, people would follow you. Why not take a group out and mop up the war clans. Hell, you could probably take over the Plains with the right forces behind you.”

She snorted. “We don’t all have delusions of grandeur and schemes of world domination.”

He still refused to accept it. “I get Miles settling down with Rachel and doing the whole Maybury thing, but not you. You have to realize that you were meant for more than this.”

Charlie felt a small surge of adrenaline as her heart thudded a bit quicker in her chest. It was eerie to hear Bass put into words the lament that had echoed through her mind every day for the past three months since they’d all settled down after defeating the Patriots. She’d always chastised herself, pointing out that she was no better than anyone else. There was no such thing as fate or destiny, just dealing the hand life dealt you. These were her cards now and she really had tried to give the whole normal life thing a shot for her family’s sake, but Bass was right. Inside it had been eating away at her, until there was nearly nothing of herself left.

“This is what my family wanted for me – the reason they fought. They went through all of this so that I could have a normal life. I owe it to them to at least give it a shot.”

“Horse shit!” Bass blurted out. “Forget what I said a minute ago. You are nothing like your mother. And while some of the resemblances can be nearly creepy, you’re not Miles either. It’s great and all that they care, and that they had plans for what they wanted your life to be. But, Charlie, what do you want?” He’d approached her as he’d spoken, and now he stared down at her, straight into her eyes.

“I don’t know.” She faltered.

“Yes you do. If you can’t be honest with me, at least be honest with yourself. Say it Charlotte. What. Do. You. Want?”

“More than this!” She shouted and pushed away from him. “Alright? Is that what you want to hear? All of my family is happy and content, and I’m miserable. Why can’t I just be normal? Why can’t I ever be happy?” She didn’t know why his questioning had affected her this deeply, but he’d struck a nerve and she felt herself frustrated nearly to the point of tears. She’d never meant to admit to her misery, and certainly not to him or like this.

It caught her completely off guard when he stepped up and threw his arms around her.

“Hey, it’s ok.” He murmured as he pulled her against his chest.

She was stunned speechless. After a few tense seconds, she was just about to relax her rigid posture, when she felt a memory snap through her brain and engulf her senses like an overly stretched rubber band had just been released.

_“Only question left is if you’re going to be as anti-social as that prick over there, or are you going to give me a fucking hug goodbye.” Bass half spoke and half gasped at her._

_“God, you are such an ass.” She laughed through her tears as she leaned in and they wrapped their arms around each other._

_“Wouldn’t want you to remember me any other way.” He smiled into the hair hanging at her neck._

_“You don’t have to do this. There has to be another way. Just come with us, we’ll find it.” She pleaded again as she pulled back from him._

_“I know you Mathesons love to play the martyr card, but just for once, could you get the hell out of here and let me be the hero?” He wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “You’re the only damned one of them that ever thought I might be worth saving. Please just let me prove you right.”_

By the time the memory faded and Charlie was jolted back to reality, they were both clinging to each other.

“Did you just see that too?” Bass asked, his voice slightly tremulous.

“Yeah.” She admitted in a whispered breath. The flashback had been a little to all-encompassing and real. She felt like she was back at the bridge that day, and the sadness she’d felt saying goodbye to the man still in her arms had been overwhelming. As Charlie tried to calm herself, remind herself that it was over and everyone was eventually alright, her eyes caught on something in the doorway at the back of the kitchen leading to the back yard.

Bass must have felt her tense up, because he stroked a hand up and down her back and asked, “Are you alright? It was just the nano. It’s over.”

“Actually, I don’t think it is.” She barely pushed the words from her mouth.

“Huh? What is it?” He sounded confused.

“It’s the nano. They’re here. That or my dead brother is standing in the doorway.”

Bass instantly dropped his arms from around her and spun to face the doorway. “Charlie, there’s nothing there.”

“They’re only appearing in a way I can see them. This is what they do.”

“You know how insane that sounds, right?”

“Says the dead guy.” She shot him a look from the corner of her eye. He seemed to take the hint.

Charlie turned all her attention to the apparition in the doorway. “What do you want?”

“Hey sis.” Nano-Danny greeted cheerfully.

Charlie felt her insides clench at the familiar greeting, but she knew it wasn’t really her brother. “What do you want?”

“Does it bother you that we’ve taken this form?” It was still Danny’s voice, but it no longer held his familiar timbre and cadence.

“You’re not my brother.” Charlie answered coldly.

“We chose this form because we did not want to frighten you. We thought you would be happy to see you deceased sibling again. You were happy enough to see Sebastian when we revived him.”

“That’s different.” Charlie started to explain, but stopped herself. “It just wasn’t what I expected. But now you’re here, so why don’t you tell me what you want.”

The apparition nodded and began, “We need your help.”

“Yeah, I got that part yesterday when you sent me to retrieve your secret weapon.” She hooked her thumb at Bass.

“We appreciate your assistance with this matter, but we require further action.”

“Such as?” Charlie was starting to tire of their cryptic ways.

“We have encountered a threat of our own making that we cannot contain.”

“Seriously? You created something that’s trying to destroy you? I wonder how that feels.” She then turned to Bass, “Can you imagine what it feels like to have your own creation turned against you and try to destroy the world as you know it?”

“Not me personally, but I bet your mom might know a thing or two… Ow!” He was interrupted by Charlie swiftly kicking his shin.

“Your sarcasm is unnecessary.” Nano-Danny droned in a stern but monotone voice.

“This sounds like your problem. Why should we do anything more to help you?” Charlie asked.

“Because the new technology we have created is a threat not only to us, but to you and all the organic life on this planet as well.” Seeing that Charlie was unimpressed, it added, “And since we returned Sebastian to his former state, we can undo the process at any time.”

“What! No! You can’t do that.” Charlie became nearly hysterical.

“We certainly can, but his assistance has been deemed necessary. As long as you are willing to work toward defeating our common enemy, we see no reason to undo the reanimation.”

“Alright. We’ll help you. But you have to tell us what to do. We haven’t even seen this new threat that you’re talking about. You have to tell us what we’re up against and how to fight it.” Charlie reasoned.

“All that we know will be revealed when we deem you ready. Until then, you should prepare yourselves for your most challenging battle to date.”

“We’ll be ready.” Charlie assured the nano.

“We will be in touch when it is time for the next phase of your mission to begin. Until then it is imperative that no one learn of Sebastian’s return. Secrecy is key to our plan.”

“Fine. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Very well. We will speak again.” Then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, the nano disappeared.

Charlie turned to Bass. “Well, that was cryptic.”

“What did they want?” He asked.

“To make sure that we are still on board with helping them.”

“And if we weren’t?” Bass followed up like he already had an idea of where the side of the conversation he couldn’t hear had gone.

Charlie looked up at him with concern. “They said that they gave you back your life, and if we don’t help them, they can take it away again just as easily.”

“Because nothing drives someone to fight for your cause like the threat of eminent death if they don’t.” Bass mocked.

“They did also say that this new threat, one that they somehow created, is also a threat to every living being on the planet.” Charlie added.

“How altruistic of them. And here I thought they were just trying to save their own asses.” Bass snarked. “Do we even know what we’re up against?”

“They gave some lame ‘all will be revealed in time’ crap. But for now they said we needed to train up to do battle with something worse than anything we’ve ever faced before.”

“So what are your thoughts on that?” Bass asked inquisitively, “Because I’m thinking it’s gonna be zombies. We know these fuckers do have a penchant for reanimating the dead. Maybe one of their early experiments went horribly wrong.”

“Don’t zombies come from some kind of virus?” Charlie looked quizzical.

“Umm… yeah… I realize that you only had Aaron as a teacher for your formative years, but you do know that zombies aren’t real, right?”

“Yes, I know that.” Charlie snapped back. “But just in case, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t try to bite me at any point in the future.” Then she darted over to the stove to take the whistling tea pot off the burner.

“Wait… What? I’m not… Dammit Charlotte. I’m not a zombie.”

“You did come back from the dead…”

He just growled at her and then proceeded to chase her around the small kitchen murmuring “Brains…”.

While the sudden jovial spirit between the two of them still felt out of place, she couldn’t help but go along with it. It had been so long since she’d felt anything besides boredom, that she wasn’t willing to give it up. Even if it did mean letting Sebastian Monroe treat her like a friend. She stuck out her right hand to push him away when he got close, both too busy laughing to actually continue the pursuit any more. He grabbed the hand and pulled it up to his mouth. He was about to bite at her wrist when his lips grazed across the brand on her skin.

Instantly there was another snap and Charlie felt her mind forced back into a memory from the day on the bridge.

_“Gonna miss you, Bass.” She stared up at him, her glassy eyes still threatening to let another tear drop._

_“Hey, you actually called me…” She cut him off by ignoring his previous order to head for the hills, as always, and stepped forward to hug him again. “Goodbye Charlotte.”_

_She pulled back and let her hands trace down along his biceps and then his forearms as she stepped away from him. His fingers grazed along the inside of her right wrist, and they both looked down at the brand, then up into each other’s eyes. He felt a traitorous tear start to roll down his own cheek. She reached up and wiped it away with the pad of her thumb as she gave him the biggest, warmest smile. That patch of damaged flesh on her wrist would mean something entirely different from this point on. It was just one of the enumerable regrets on his list of unforgivable sins, but being able to undo that one injustice left his heart feeling like a weight had been lifted from it. They shared one more smile before she turned and walked away._

When they both snapped out of it this time, her wrist was still pressed to his lips. They both just stared at each other for a second before Charlie quickly pulled her hand back.

“So... yeah… good times…” She sputtered, then took a long drag of her tea, trying to dislodge the dread of eminent loss that had seeped from the memory into her conscious state. She also caught herself absent mindedly rubbing at the inside of her right wrist and forced her hands apart. The flashback had obviously affected her, because she could have sworn she’d seen the old microwave light up and buzz for half a second after she opened her eyes. The memory itself had been enough of a disruption. She did not want to think about the way her skin was still tinging where his lips had been on her arm. Befriending the man she’d spent the last six months grieving over was one thing. Anything beyond that was simply not an option. His voice broke her out of her reverie.

“Well at least this is all stuff that you were there for. I can’t wait until we get to the embarrassing memories.”

“If you can’t remember anything, how do you know there’s embarrassing stuff?” Charlie asked, confused.

“I know how my mind works. There’s bound to be something embarrassing.”

“I don’t think I want to know.” Charlie tried to physically shake off his comment and the lingering emotions from the flashback.

Attempting to change the subject, Bass asked, “So, what’s the plan now?”

Charlie thought a moment before answering. “If we’re supposed to be training, we’re gonna need supplies. Looks like I’m heading into town after all.”

“Well, you wanted to be back in the fight. Looks like you got your wish.”

“I didn’t wish for the potential annihilation of all life on Earth.” Charlie whined.

“Po-ta-to, po-tah-to.” Bass shrugged. As he noticed Charlie pack up her things and head towards the back door, he added, “Hey, wait up. I’ll come too.”

“The nano seemed pretty strict about the need for their secret weapon to stay secret.” She cautioned, but seeing that he still seemed intent on following, she added, “If word gets out that you’ve risen from the dead, not only will we likely end up with an angry mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers at our door, but then you become useless to the nano. I got the impression that if you weren’t of use to them, they had no reason to keep you around. Get it?” Her voice held actual concern at the end.

“Fine. I’ll just sit here and wait for your return.” He grumbled.

She nodded at him and slipped out the door.


	5. Weapons and a visitor

“Hey kid.” Miles greeted from the kitchen as Charlie entered the living room of her grandfather’s house. He and Rachel had officially decided to cohabitate in her familial home in order to make it easier for her to help her dad with his medical practice and because the old farm house was a bit big for Gene to be rattling around in all by himself. It was also a hell of a lot nicer than Miles’s old bachelor pad, and Charlie suspected that her mother’s standards excluded the old photography studio as an acceptable domicile.

“Howdy Sheriff.” Charlie shot back with a sarcastic smile. After only ever knowing her uncle as the rebel working to overthrow the Republic or attempting to topple the Patriot faux-government, Charlie still found it humorous to think that Miles was now the one responsible for upholding the law in Willoughby. Even after three months, teasing him about his new job hadn’t gotten old. At least not to her. She was pretty sure he was sick of it though. She found her mind drifting to envision how terribly her new house guest would rib her uncle about the career choice. As she imagined Bass tormenting Miles by constantly whistling the Andy Griffith Show theme song (a pre-blackout reference Aaron had explained to her not long after Miles had become Sheriff), a smile subconsciously began tugging at her lips. Realizing the slip, she quickly schooled her features before rounding the corner to join her uncle in the kitchen.

“Gene and your mom are out on a house call.” He offered, seeming to find it unlikely that he was the intended recipient of her visit.

“Actually, I came to see you.” She offered with a little smile as he sat at the table and sipped his coffee.

“That can’t be a good thing.” He said in his classic sarcastic but slightly worried Miles tone. “What kind of trouble have you gotten in now?

“Very funny.” She scoffed at him and pulled up a chair facing him across the table. “I just need to borrow some stuff.

“What stuff and why?” Miles eyed her warily.

Charlie knew that she had never had much of a knack for lying, and the odds of her getting one over on Miles were virtually non-existent. She had hoped the house would be vacant upon her arrival, but she’d had a backup plan just in case. If faced with Miles as an interrogator, she decided that the best course of action would be the truth. Or at least a slightly altered version of it.

“I’ve got somebody I am going to start sparring with to keep in shape, but I don’t have enough equipment for both of us. I just wanted to borrow some of the stuff we stashed here. Figured why waste good diamonds on weapons when we’ve got a whole basement full of them?” She kept her tone light.

Miles was still giving her an appraising stare. He knew something was up, and Charlie feared that he was about to call her on her deception. Then he broke into a grin and asked, “This person you’re going to start training with wouldn’t happen to be a guy, would it?”

Charlie had to hold in a giant sigh of relief she had almost exhaled. Miles thought that what she was hiding was a new romantic interest. She nearly laughed at his assumption. It couldn’t be any further from the truth, but it would make a plausible enough cover.

“Maybe.” She tried to make it sound like she was deflecting his question.

“And this young man wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with why you never showed up for dinner last night, would he?”

Crap. In all the craziness of dealing with the nano, she’d forgotten her standing Friday night dinner date with her family.

“I’m afraid that if I say yes you’ll hold it against him.” It wasn’t a lie. Lord knows her family held everything else against Bass for more than a couple years.

“It’ll be our secret.” Miles tipped his head conspiratorially and then took another draw from his mug. “Wouldn’t want your mom disapproving before she even meets the guy.”

She had to fight hard to keep a riotous chuckle buried in her throat. The thought of any set of circumstances where her mother would approve of her and Monroe was beyond laughable.

“You know Mom. Pretty sure that’s gonna happen anyway.” Thy both smiled and shrugged. Then Charlie got back to the point, “So it’s cool if I grab some things from the basement?”

“Yeah. Take whatever you need.”

“Thanks. “ She set off toward the stairs that would lead to the windowless room where they had stashed their own small arsenal after the war against the Patriots had ended, but turned back when she heard Miles call out.

“Whoever this mystery guy is, take it easy on him. It’s nice to see you finally starting to settle down, and it ‘d be a shame to see you chase a guy off by bruising his fragile male ego… or his ribs.” Miles let a grin pull at one side of his mouth.

Charlie smiled back. Miles acting protectively paternal was a rare occurrence that happened with the same frequency as blue moons and total solar eclipses. Even though the advice was completely irrelevant, she appreciated the sentiment. “How do you know he’s not the one that’s gonna hurt me?” She fired back teasingly.

Miles cocked an eyebrow at her. “Because I trained you.” After a contemplative pause he added, “And because if this guy hurts you in any way, I’ll find him and kill him in his sleep.”

Charlie’s mind conjured up the image of Miles holding a gun on Bass at his bedside in Philly that she’d imagined ever since she’d been told about her uncle’s failed assassination attempt on his best friend. Miles’s word choice on that last statement was almost too ironic to be a coincidence. Almost.

“I’ll let him know that.” Charlie deadpanned.

“I’d be happy to tell him myself.” Miles was obviously fishing for an offer to meet her new imaginary beau. His level of interest in her new life was sweet, but inconvenient. Since settling down he had slowly become more willing to actually express his emotions and concerns for his family, to the extent that Miles Matheson could ever be suggested to have emotions, of course. It was a sign of his surprisingly successful acclimation into a quiet normal life with her mother, and Charlie couldn’t help but find it rather adorable. That being said, it would be far easier to perpetrate all the sneaking around and stretching the truth that she would undoubtedly be doing in the coming weeks if he were still crotchety, detached, and uninterested.

“Yeah. About that… No offense, but this isn’t exactly the kind of family you drop on somebody all at once. I think I’ll give it a while before subjecting him to the whole Matheson family reunion.”

“Fair enough.” Miles shrugged.

With that, Charlie made her way down to the basement. She couldn't help but feel slightly more at ease as she finished descending the stairs. What had once been an under utilized storage space for canned preserves and old unused home goods had been turned into one of the largest weapons caches outside the Texas government. It's not that her family was paranoid, it was just that... well... was it still paranoia if someone really was out to get them? They didn't know about the nano threat yet, but that didn't make it any less real. Miles had originally just used the basement to store the weapons they'd had and no longer needed after the end of the Patriot War. Then he'd come across a few choice weapons being offloaded by individuals that were more in need of money or crops than heavy artillery after the Patriots were gone, and he'd just started collecting. Few other people had as thorough of a grasp on the concept of how fickle peace could be. The next time things went to hell, they'd be prepared. What had Aaron teasingly called it? “Doomsday prepping”? Miles had taken a little offense to the term, but ultimately Charlie found it kind of accurate. They were Mathesons. Doomsdays were kind of their family business.

No matter what anyone else thought, she'd always found the basement below her grandfather's house comforting. Maybe it was because she'd spent the past couple years growing up with weapons easily accessible, or maybe it was the safety the stockpile represented, but she felt far more at home amongst the weapons than she did anywhere else in the boring little town.

Grabbing a military duffel from a shelf, she started loading the things she and Bass would need. Hand guns, holsters, ammo, a couple rifles, and of course, a few swords. As she prepared to leave, she looked at the sheathed sword and machete leaning what appeared to be haphazardly in the corner, nowhere near the other instruments of hand to hand combat. She should probably leave them. Their absence would be noticed immediately. They were special. They were _his_. But with that thought she couldn't resist. She grabbed the blades and shoved them into the bag with the rest of the supplies. After everything he'd been through, Bass needed something familiar. Maybe his old weapons would do the trick to help him settle in.

 

…..

Bass finished poking around the last cupboard in the kitchen and plopped down in a chair at the small table. Charlie had been gone for a couple hours now and he had nothing left to do. He’d nosed around the cottage and, finding nothing interesting, had completely run out of activities to occupy himself with. It was a rare occurrence for him to be free of any set responsibilities and not fearing for his life. He could scarcely remember ever having literally nothing to do. What had he done the last time he was this bored? Oh. That’s right. He annexed Wisconsin. He laughed at the memory of Miles’s return from that campaign. His silent proclamation of success had been to stride into Bass’s office and toss one of those foam cheese head hats onto his desk with a smirk. Bass had no idea how he’d found the old Packers souvenir, but the tacky thing had held a place of pride on his book case for over a month until it was highly suggested that it be moved before a meeting with some delegates from California. Despite how horribly it had all turned out, there were a few good memories from the Republic.

He debated going back to sleep out of sheer lack of anything better to do, but he couldn’t suppress the chill that ran down his spine at the thought of reliving the dream from earlier. Watching himself die was unsettling, even if it had been undone.

He was raiding the icebox for the umpteenth time when he heard the front door open.

“I don't think I ever fully understood the term 'dying of boredom' before, but now I think I get it. What the hell took you so long...” Bass trailed off as he turned the corner and realized that it wasn't Charlie that had entered the house.

Frozen in the doorway, glasses displaced and pinching the bridge of his nose, was Aaron Pittman. “Really?” He said looking upward. His voice was more frustration than surprise, which Bass found unsettling. “ _He_ is the secret weapon that's going to save humanity?” Again the chubby man sounded exasperated as he undoubtedly addressed the nano.

“It would appear that secret is becoming a relative term at this point, but that's what they tell me. Or what they told Charlie.” Bass shrugged.

Aaron sighed, returned his glasses to their normal position, and closed the door behind him. He procured a flask from his jacket pocket and took a long swig from it before capping it, returning it to the pocket and finally addressing Bass directly. “You.”

“Me.” Bass said flatly in confirmation.

“This has got to be a joke.” Aaron muttered.

“Resurrection's probably a bit much for a prank, even for these self righteous glow worms.”

“Fireflies.” Aaron corrected.

“Whatever.”

Aaron attempted to move on. “Where's Charlie?”

“Out getting supplies.”

“And why are you here?” Aaron asked.

“Couldn't go with her because no one else was supposed to know about me.”

“I know that part.” Aaron grumbled. “But why are you in Charlie's house?” He noted the blanket and pillow still haphazardly sitting on the edge of the couch. “How long have you been here?”

“We got in early this morning. I'm here because the nano decided to make her my handler or whatever. Like they don't trust me on my own or something.”

Aaron scoffed. “Can't imagine why.”

“Whatever, Firestarter. You come here for a reason, or did you just show up to whine because you're not their favorite anymore?” Bass snarked.

“I think I'm supposed to help you.” Aaron sighed.

Bass raised an eyebrow. “The nano wants me and Charlie prepping for the fight of our lives and they think _you_ are gonna help with that? I'm thinking that calling them 'all-knowing' may be a bit of an overstatement.”

“Glad to see they didn't do anything to change your winning personality.” Aaron sneered. “In case you forgot, these are still machines controlled by programming. When's the last time you wrote computer code that managed to turn sentient?”

“In high school I could make my calculator spell out 'boobies' if you turned it upside down.” Bass looked pleased with himself. Aaron just groaned. “Easy there Skynet. I get it. It's gonna take all of us, and we're gonna have to work together with our different skill sets and whatever. We're gonna be the god damn Avengers.”

“I was thinking more like the Justice League, but yeah, that seems to be the nano's general plan for us.” This time it was Aaron's turn to shrug.

“Well, welcome to the League, Wonder Woman.” Bass clapped Aaron on the shoulder.

“Very funny. If we're going with the Justice League scenario, I'm obviously Batman.” Aaron corrected.

“I'm Batman.” Bass nearly growled. “Called that one months ago.”

“Please.” Aaron scoffed. “Next time you have a multimillion dollar corporation of your own that funds your hobby of making technologically advanced gadgets, you can be Batman.”

Bass just glared.

“Hey, it's alright. Superman's nothing to scoff at.” Aaron cajoled. “I am assuming the nano gave you some kind of super powers when they revived you. I mean, what kind of secret weapons doesn't have some special powers?”

“I feel about ten years younger than when I died and weird shit happens when I remember stuff from the last two days I was alive.” It was all Bass could come up with.

“Not exactly flight, super speed, and x-ray vision, but I guess it's better than nothing...” Aaron was interrupted by the front door opening behind him.

Charlie's voice started out confused and progressed to terrified, “What? Shit. No!” She dropped the things she'd been holding and started shoving Aaron toward the door. “You can't be here!”

“Easy Charlotte.” Bass moved to stop her attack. “The nano sent him. Seems like they think we need someone with computer skills on the team. It's ok. I'm fine.” He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Then suddenly, reality snapped out of focus.

 

_“It's ok. I'm fine.” Bass grumbled._

_“If you're fine, then where's all that blood coming from?” Charlie pestered._

_Bass quickly wiped his hand off on his jeans. “What blood?”_

_Charlie appraised him for a few seconds, then her hand shot out lightning fast and pulled the left side of his jacket back, exposing the bullet wound. She was obviously shocked at what she found. “What the fuck, Monroe? That's a bullet wound. IN YOUR CHEST!” Then she turned and yelled for Miles._

_“But I'm still breathing and we need to keep moving.” The sputtering and gurgling sound coming from the wound as he spoke did not lend his argument any credence._

_“We need to get you medical attention.” Charlie almost shouted._

_He'd known that their begrudging trust had been teetering toward actual friendship, especially the past day or so, but he was still taken aback by the concern in her eyes._

_“Charlie. We have to stop that train, here and now. We leave to get this looked at and that train will make it to California. Then we're all dead.” He tried to make his voice sound gruff, but he ended up needing to gasp for air by the time he was done talking. She still looked like she wanted to argue the point, so he added, “And it won't make a difference any way.”_

_“What do you mean, it won't make a difference?” Charlie's voice was small and scared._

_Just then Miles walked up. “Jesus, Bass! What the fuck?” Miles shoved a hand over the sucking chest wound. He had apparently evaluated the wound and was a little quicker about reaching an accurate conclusion than his niece. “When did this happen?”_

_Bass batted Miles's hand away. “Firefight on the way here.”_

_“And you didn't think to say anything?” Miles chastised._

_“Look man, we both know what's gonna happen. I'm not gonna be the reason you don't stop that train. Especially when it's for nothing.” Bass grit out._

_Miles turned away, angrily. Though Bass knew that the anger wasn't directed at him. Then suddenly Charlie was back in his face._

_“What do you mean 'for nothing'?” She interrogated._

_He wanted to say it, but he couldn't look down at her and deliver that blow. He'd already indirectly taken enough of her family from her. The fact that she was apparently dreading the inevitable news that he was going to be taken too, tore painfully at something inside him._

_It was Miles who spoke up, his back still towards them and his voice sadly detached. “That wound's fatal. Lungs are torn and collapsing, the bullet's still rattling around in there destroying God knows what, and there's internal bleeding. He's got less than an hour before he suffocates or bleeds to death.”_

_“No!” Charlie yelled as she grabbed his hand and shoved it over the wound, attempting to apply pressure and block the irregular passage of air into his chest. “There has to be something we can do.”_

_Bass kept his hand where she had placed it mostly to humor her, and partly because he liked the feeling of her hand pushing on top of his, her fingers slightly entwined with his and pressing over his ribcage. It wasn't sexual, not that he hadn't maybe thought about her hands pressing into his flesh elsewhere on some cold lonely nights, but this time it was just the intimacy of human contact. Someone truly cared whether he lived or died. It had been a long time since he'd felt that. He started to feel more concern about what his imminent demise was going to do to the poor girl with her hand on his wound than about the fact that he was actually going to die. How weird was that? But then again, maybe that was the point._

_Keeping his hand in place over the wound, he put his other hand on Charlie's shoulder and pushed her away. He felt a small palpable loss as her hand lost contact with his. “I'm sorry, kid. Your uncle's right. This... there's nothing anybody can do for me now. So let's focus on something we can still do. Like stopping that train.”_

_Miles turned back and locked eyes with his oldest friend. After a long stare that seemed to silently say all the things Bass had so desperately wanted to hear from Miles over the last six plus years, they started to discuss their plans for destroying the bridge up ahead, and thereby taking out the Patriot's last shot at igniting a war between Texas and California. Ultimately, it was decided that Bass would blow the bridge with their two remaining grenades. Charlie, still reluctant to accept Bass's ultimate fate, had objected. They'd given her the time it took for them to approach the edge of the bridge to come to terms with it. It was going to happen._

_Standing next to the bridge, Bass silently unfastened his sword belt and handed it to Miles. He wasn't going to need it any more and there was no reason to waste good weapons. Miles looked at him with actual respect in his eyes as he accepted the sheathed sword and machete. In all the years that had passed between them, everything they shared, this was a new sentiment. For years he had been Commander and Chief of a quarter of the continent, but he had never received such true respect from anyone, and certainly not Miles. Bass felt a twinge of sadness at the realization that this was what it took for him to actually be the type of person his best friend respected. How much of his life had been a waste? Why couldn't he have just gotten his shit together sooner? He thought back briefly on his decision to ditch Neville and Connor and follow Miles to save the town and stop the Patriots. It was a knee-jerk reaction to an invitation from the man that he still, despite everything, considered to be his brother. Consequences be damned. Bass laughed, realizing that that choice had felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. In some ways it was a lifetime ago. His laughter initiated a coughing fit that spewed blood into his mouth and brought Charlie instantly to his side._

_His head was swimming, and he fought to refocus on the task at hand. “Get her out of here, Miles.”_

_Then there were the teary good byes he shared with his two friends. They somehow managed to both nearly break him and give him the resolve to do what he knew had to come next._

_Bass was jogging the best he could toward the train tracks when Miles's voice stopped him. “Bass!” Once Bass had turned to look at him, he added, “I love you.”_

_“Love you too, brother.”_

 

Bass felt as if the Earth rushed up to meet his feet, and suddenly he was back in Charlie's living room, his hand on her shoulder. He was thankful for the support, because that memory was jarring enough that it left his legs feeling a little weak. They were both breathing heavily, the emotional stress of the memory leading to a physical stress on their bodies in the present. Their eyes were locked, and it was a few long seconds before either could blink and look away.

As they pulled apart and started to compose themselves, Aaron spoke. “Uh. Guys...”

When they turned to face him, they noticed him pointing up at the derelict old light fixture attached to the ceiling. Except it was no longer derelict. The solitary intact light bulb inside the broken glass casing was giving off a dim glow that faded back to darkness over the next two to three seconds.

“Um. What the hell was that?” Aaron questioned.

“Remember how I said shit happens when I remember stuff?” Bass answered.

“Shit like the power coming back on?” Aaron sounded frantic.

“Wasn't really sure if that part was real or if I was imagining it. The memories are... disorienting. It takes a bit to snap out of them.” Bass offered.

“And why does Charlie look like she's seen a ghost too?”

“Because any time he remembers, I see it too.” She supplied.

“This is...” All Aaron could do was shake his head.

“Insane?” Bass filled in. “Yeah. We know.”

“Well you two both look like you just got steamrolled by a Mack truck. Maybe I should come back later.” Aaron offered.

Bass looked to Charlie and could tell she was still shaken. “Not a bad idea.”

“Alright.” Aaron reluctantly agreed after a concerned glance at Charlie. “I'll come back after dark.”

Bass nodded ascent, and Aaron left.

Bass turned back to Charlie, and the fact that they were alone together in the small house suddenly felt palpable. “Well that was...” He trailed off, unable to find the right word to describe the emotions the previous memory had drug up.

“Yeah.” Charlie supplied. He obviously didn't need to finish the sentence out loud. They both understood. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Not in the slightest.” Bass instantly shot back. It was already awkward enough. He had been dying. He had every right to get a little sentimental. She was not necessarily ever supposed to know about that.

“Wanna go hit each other with weapons?” She lifted the duffel bag to accentuate her point.

“I like that idea a lot better.” He smiled.

She opened the bag and fished around a little before announcing, “I even got you a present.” When her hand emerged, she tossed him his sword belt.

He caught it mid-air and smiled as he recognized the blades.

“You’re gonna have to help me come up with something to tell Miles when he asks why I needed those particular weapons. I barely got through a five minute conversation with him today using half-truths.”

“You really aren’t very good at lying.” Bass acknowledged as he strapped the familiar sword belt into place. “And up against Miles? I’m surprised you even managed to pull off what you did.”

“He assumed that when I said I was going to start sparring with someone that the guy must be my new boyfriend. That kept him kind of distracted.”

Bass couldn’t decide whether to be concerned or burst out laughing. “And you didn’t correct him?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Actually uncle Miles, I’m sparring with your dead best friend that’s been resurrected by the nanites to be their secret weapon in a war that’s coming against some kind of evil super-nanite, but it’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone.’?”

“See, it just sounds crazy when you say it that way.” Bass grinned at her.

“Come on.” She rolled her eyes at him and made her way through the kitchen to the back door.

He followed obediently. They really did make a decent team as long as he didn’t do anything to seriously piss her off. Fortunately she seemed not to have noticed his mind’s sidetracked thought about some of his more inappropriate fantasies that slipped during the shared memory. He was feeling rather lucky to have dodged that bullet.

Reaching the door, she turned in the frame and glared at him. “And just so we’re clear, I don’t care how cold and lonely you get at night. The only time my hands touch your body, it’s gonna be in the context of training, and it’s gonna leave a bruise.” Then she turned and stalked out into the back yard.

“Dammit.” He mumbled to himself as he dropped his head in embarrassment.


	6. Memories Best Left Forgotten

Charlie lie flat on her back, aching, the wind knocked out of her, and seething at the smirk on Monroe’s face as he glared down at her.

“You ok?” He asked, his tone indicating that he knew the only thing damaged was her pride.

“Fine.” She grumbled and started trying to stand on her own.

He’d been holding back when they started with some simple hand to hand combat training. She’d yelled at him for it, realizing that playing it safe wasn’t going to help either of them. They’d gone at each other all out during training a few times before, and while he always outmatched her (she didn’t take it personally since Miles might be the only person on the continent that had a chance of legitimately taking down Sebastian Monroe in a fight), this time was beyond anything she’d expected. He’d pummeled her nearly effortlessly. She had thought she had one advantage, however. She sprung a surprise attack at him from the far left, fully aware of his blind spot from watching him fight over the year they worked together. Instead of the flying sneak attack connecting, he’d swatted her down like a fly that he’d seen coming a mile away.

She faltered slightly as she stood, a wave of dizziness hitting her from getting up too fast. He looked like he was about to reach for her, but she waved him off and braced her forearms on her thighs until she regained her balance. They’d learned the hard way that it prompted a memory flashback almost any time they touched that wasn’t a punch or a kick. Before figuring out the trigger, attempts to help each other up or inspect an injury had cycled them through memories of stopping the gas attack on Willoughby and kidnapping Davis.

“I don’t know how you knew about it to begin with,” Bass commented as Charlie tried to catch her breath, “but the blind spot’s been gone since the nano brought me back.”

“Now you tell me.” Charlie coughed out.

Bass approached and looked concerned as he gave her a once over, being careful not to touch her. The sincerity in his gaze bothered her. Ok, honestly what bothered her was how easily he’d pummeled her into the ground. She’d figured that she had gotten a little rusty without regular practice over the last three months, but this was ridiculous. She felt weak and vulnerable, and those were not feelings that she dealt with well.

“Do you need a break?” He asked. His tone wasn’t particularly patronizing, but she couldn’t help taking it that way. He’d landed more punches in the last five minutes than she had all day. The only break she wanted was to break his nose.

With no preamble, she swung at him. Her fist connected squarely with his jaw and sent his head snapping to the side.

“What the fuck Charlotte?” He howled as he recovered from the blow. Recognizing her fighting stance he sighed and dropped into his own.

She knew she’d pay for the cheap shot, but she didn’t care. She was going to be covered in bruises by morning. She needed to mark him with some form of visible reminder that she hadn’t just rolled over in this fight. She swung again, and he quickly blocked it.

“You’re still dropping your shoulder before your left hook.” He instructed as he feigned going right with his footwork, then landed a left jab to her stomach.

She took the punch and remained upright, feeling like she deserved the hit for falling for another one of his fake outs. She was getting better at reading his body language, but he still had far better control than she felt like she ever would.

“It’s almost dark. You ready to call it a day yet?” He called out.

“Getting tired, old man?” She yelled back, collecting herself and preparing to strike.

He just rolled his eyes and shrugged. She launched another attack, sure that this time her feint would be believable and that she would land the combination of shots she had planned in her head. Instead he easily leaned to the left and avoided her first punch, while simultaneously grabbing her arm and using it to flip her over his dropped shoulder and once again onto her back. He was left crouching over her, with his hands pinning her arms to the dirt and his knees keeping her legs immobilized.

“Now are we done?” He asked almost smugly.

The full weight of his body was on top of her, and she couldn’t even squirm to try and maneuver into a less vulnerable position. Accepting her defeat, she grumbled, “Fine.”

As he started to stand, she debated kneeing him in the groin, purely out of spite, but decided against it. They were both immersed in their own thoughts, because once he was on his feet, Bass absent-mindedly reached a hand down to her to help her up. Distracted and sore to the point of barely being able to move on her own, she took the outstretched hand.

With a snap and a brief feeling of the world shuffling like playing cards around her, they were suddenly in a dilapidated pump house not far from Willoughby.

_President Davis was tied to a pipe and gagged. Realizing that he was in trouble, he made a final appeal to the former president holding him captive, one leader to another. To his credit, Bass didn’t take the bait. He re-gagged Davis after letting him know that plan B meant getting to slit his throat, which was one hell of a consolation prize. With his captive once again secured, Bass stepped outside to get some water._

_Connor approached as Bass filled his canteen. He pleaded with his father to let them kill the president, to encourage the war that he had promised Miles that he would help prevent. For a moment it really looked like Bass was considering it. But then it was his turn to plead to his son. He tried to explain the importance of his mission and why it meant something to him that Miles had trusted him. Unfortunately Connor didn’t want to hear any of it. His only concern was the reformation of the Republic. The Republic that would be his by birthright. To the very end Bass didn’t give up on trying to convince his son to join him and do the right thing, even though he knew Neville was watching and wouldn’t hesitate at a chance to take him out once and for all. Having realized that Bass would not surrender his captive, Connor laid into him for choosing Miles over his own flesh and blood. Then came the truly horrifying part. He stepped back, giving Neville the signal to take the shot._

_Bullets came at him from all directions as Bass dove for cover. He eventually took out Scanlon and retreated into the pump house where he’d stashed Davis. Davis tried to make a quip about family drama, but the tie in his mouth muffled most of the dig beyond being audible. As Bass shoved the board in place on the door he’d watched Neville and Connor enter through, he realized that he’d just sealed his fate with his son as much as he’d sealed their prison. Shoving Davis into the wagon, he gave the pump house a single long look before snapping the reins and forcing the horses to drive the cart forward._

As the world snapped back into place for her, Charlie realized that it wouldn’t for Bass, even though the memory was over. He’d never told them about what had happened with Connor, and when they’d found the younger Monroe wandering in the woods a week after his father’s death, he had never confessed to the incident.

Charlie was still sitting on the ground, her hand in Bass’s outstretched one, not having been pulled to her feet before the memory had hit. She knew what family meant to him. Miles had told her the stories after he was gone. She understood exactly what he had sacrificed for her family, and she almost couldn’t believe that he’d managed to go on after that, let alone to not tell them what had happened. Her heart hurt for him. She doubted that having to relive that choice in his memory was any easier than it was for him when he made it the first time. She worried that he was about to break. She could feel him starting to pull away and gripped his hand harder.

Seeming to remember for the first time that she was still there, he hauled her up to her feet, and then quickly extracted his hand from hers. He turned to stalk into the woods without a word.

“Bass!” She called after him, but didn’t follow.

He gave no reply and didn’t even break his stride as he disappeared amongst the trees.

All she could do was go back into the house and have faith that since he survived it once that he would survive it again and come back. She began lighting some lamps as the daylight started to dwindle. She also lit the stove to heat some water. If she wanted to have any chance of moving tomorrow, she was going to need a hot bath tonight.

Aaron had appeared shortly after dark as he’d said he would, and Charlie had quickly sent him away with the promise that she’d come see him the next day. She had a feeling that it wouldn’t end well for anyone if Aaron and Bass tried to interact tonight. That was assuming that Bass even came back.

She’d just added the last pot of boiling water to the tub, making the temperature of the water steamy perfection, when she heard the back door creak open. Bass stood awkwardly in the doorway, looking more like a big hot mess than any kind of secret weapon. He’d obviously been crying, though he’d tried to hide that fact. Now he just looked lost. A small twinge of guilt struck her. She was supposed to be helping him, or taking care of him, or whatever it was that the nano wanted from her. But letting him get like this surely wasn’t what they’d had in mind. With one last longing look toward her bathroom, Charlie sighed. She reached into one of the cupboards, shifted some things around, and her hand emerged holding a half empty bottle of some alcoholic beverage that claimed to be whisky.

“Here.” She thrust the bottle at him. “Drink some of this and go take a bath. There’s hot water and everything. I’ll have some food ready when you get done.”

He just nodded silently and did as he was instructed.

Dinner was bread, boiled greens, and a pan seared venison steak. It wasn’t fancy, but it would get the job done. Charlie had never really taken to cooking extravagant meals. Like pretty much everything else in her life, she kept her food simple and functional. With the meal on the table and still no sign of her charge, Charlie grabbed a smaller bag out of the big duffel bag holding the borrowed weapons and walked through her bedroom to the locked bathroom door.

“Hey, Bass. There’s a bag of clean clothes I got in town today by the door. I think everything should fit, but I had to guess on some of the sizes.” Getting no response, she added, “And dinner’s ready.” When she still didn’t hear any noise from the other side of the door, she got a little worried. “Could you say something so I know you didn’t get pass out drunk and drown in there or something?”

Just as she was about to knock, the door swung open. He stood in the doorway, backlit by the glow of a few candles, with just a towel wrapped around his waist. His skin was still clammy and his hair drooped down over his forehead in wet curls that sent rivulets of waters cascading down his face and catching in large round droplets on the golden tips of his eyelashes. Charlie couldn’t deny that he would have looked inappropriately seductive, if it weren’t for the slump of his shoulders and the broken look in those big blue eyes. She wanted to do or say something, but everything she knew about him and the look on his face at that moment all cried out that he was inconsolable.

The whisky bottle was firmly clasped in his left hand, its contents now occupying less than a quarter of the bottle. She reached down and took the bottle from his grasp. “Should probably eat something before you polish this off if you want to be worth a damn in the morning.”

He just shrugged.

She grabbed the bag of clothes and shoved it against his chest. “Get dressed and come eat dinner.”

Charlie returned to the kitchen, leaving him to get dressed in her room. A few minutes later, he emerged wearing the jeans and V neck t shirt she had gotten for him. She was relieved to see that both items appeared to fit. She’d already had a tough enough time trying to explain why she was buy men’s clothes in the first place. Trying to return and exchange them without arousing suspicion would be next to impossible.

Bass took the empty seat at the table and started digging into the plate of food in front of him. Seeing that he would actually eat, Charlie slid the whisky bottle over toward him. He nodded in thanks, still not wanting to talk. They ate together in silence, and once he had finished, he cleaned his plate at the sink and then walked out the back door with what little remained of the whisky.

She found him sitting on a small bench not far from the back door, nursing the last of her alcohol. Taking a seat next to him, she pulled the bottle from his hand and lifted it to her lips, draining the meager two to three ounces that remained. He looked at her like she just kicked a puppy.

“You made the right choice. And I think he realized that eventually. It just took time.” She offered, looking straight out ahead towards the woods.

“He tried to kill me, Charlie. My own flesh and blood wanted me dead.” His voice was harsh and sad.

“Yeah, well, who hasn’t at one point or another?” She gave him a little smile when he looked at her with a little bit of shock in his eyes. “Miles tried to kill you, I tried to kill you, and it all worked out.”

“Very funny.” He didn’t sound particularly amused.

“Look, the last twenty-four hours have been kind of a big deal for you. Come inside, get some sleep, and see how everything looks in the morning.” She had thought back on what had come next in the sequence of events of that forty-eight hours, and she had an idea.

Charlie got up and went inside. She didn’t look back, but heard him follow her into the house. He collapsed onto the sofa as she went into her room and changed into a t shirt and boxer shorts. There would be no repeat of the previous morning. A quick rub down with a wash cloth and a bowl of room temperature water was all she’d get that night. It was a far cry from the nice warm soak she’d had planned, but when it came down to it, he’d needed it more. And it was her job to take care of him. She just hoped that her idea worked. She opened her bedroom door when she was done changing and cleaning up and glanced at him lying on his back on the couch. He was completely still, but she could tell his eyes were still open, staring numbly up at the ceiling. She gave a sad little sigh and crawled into her bed.

It took Charlie a while to finally fall asleep with everything weighing heavily on her mind. When she finally passed out, she had a few short, unrelated dreams. Nothing that stayed with her once she woke, and nothing that resembled a shared memory with Bass. The first streaks of dawn were starting to light up the sky, and she realized that her plan hadn’t worked. She had assumed that since the first memory happened when they were both asleep, that if they slept at the same time again it would trigger another memory, and hopefully the next one in the chronologic sequence. She couldn’t understand why it didn’t work. Then she got up and peeked out her bedroom door. Bass was lying on the couch exactly the same as when she’d gone to bed, including having his eyes wide open staring at the ceiling.

She walked over to the couch and he shifted his gaze slightly to look up at her.

“Have you been awake all night?” She asked, horrified.

He just shrugged in response.

“Why didn’t you go to sleep?”

Again a shrug was his only reply.

“Dammit Bass.” She grumbled at him. “Looks like we’re doing this the hard way. Sit up.”

He looked a little confused, and a lot hung over, but he did as he was told. Once he was sitting up on the couch, she sat down next to him. She’d noticed that which memory was queued up seemed to often be related to what they were doing to induce the memory. Charlie decided that she wouldn’t take any chances. Before he had a chance to object, she flung her arms around him in a bone crushing hug.

“Charlie, what are you…” Was all he was able to get out before everything snapped and buzzed out of place around them.

_The wagon ride from the pump house to the abandoned church was made in silence. Davis’s few attempts to derail the quiet were quickly stifled by a boot contacting his fleshy belly. Miles had only told him to bring the man alive. Unharmed was never part of the bargain. As Bass steered the horses along one dusty road after another, always wary and on the lookout for an ambush, he couldn’t fight off the empty feeling beginning to well up in his chest. He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t his fault, that he’d given Connor every chance. In the end it was Connor that had chosen to abandon him. But the words wouldn’t stick, and Bass knew that underneath it all, it was his fault. He’d promised the boy the Republic. He’d displaced him from his life in Mexico and forced him into this lost cause of a battle against the Patriots. He’d gotten his mother killed. He hadn’t been there for the kid’s entire life. He’d just given up the last bit of anything he could claim as family. And he’d done it for Miles, with no idea how his arrival would be received. Would Miles understand the importance of what he’d just sacrificed trying to do the right thing for once, or would they all remain just as untrusting and send him packing as soon as he was no longer immediately useful._

_Anxiety clenched at his gut as he arrived at the little church. Miles, Rachel, and Charlie were all gathered out front. He could see the disdain already radiating off of Rachel at his approach, along with apprehension on Miles and Charlie’s faces. Then he grabbed up the still breathing president by the scruff and hurled him towards Miles. And everything changed. Bass downplayed the trouble he’d run into on his way there, not ready to discuss his personal sacrifice with any of them just yet. The only words Miles spoke aloud regarded tending to the horses, but Bass could see it in his brother’s eyes. This one action hadn’t undone everything that had happened over the years, but for the first time in longer than he could remember, he looked into Miles’s eyes and saw relief and trust. In that moment he knew he’d made the right choice. That nothing else mattered. He was even more shocked when Rachel actually verbally thanked him before following Miles back into the church. Charlie hung around on the porch, watching him with a semi-stupid grin on her face as he gave the horses some water. When he’d finished his task and walked up the steps to join in the kabuki theater that made up the last stage of Miles’s plan, she was still waiting for him._

_“Gotta admit, I wasn’t sure if you’d come through.” She smiled at him._

_“That hurts, Charlotte.” He said slightly sarcastically._

_“But I was rooting for you the whole time.” She bumped her shoulder into his as they walked through the door._

_“Can’t imagine that was a popular sentiment.” He raised an eyebrow at her._

_“Let’s just say that if I were the wagering type, I’d have just cleared a nice little pay day.”_

_“You mean the rest of your family was expecting the worst out of me?” The only part that was sarcastic in that question was phrasing it as a question. He knew the answer, and prepared himself for the sting of having it confirmed._

_“Actually, Miles stood up for you. He had to force himself to do it, but he believed in you the whole time.” She was still smiling at him._

_He stopped in the little foyer that led into the main hall of the chapel where they were about to play Davis like a fiddle. Turning to look at her, he wanted to thank her, to tell her how much that meant to him, and how grateful he was in that moment for this random kindness that she had decided to bestow on him despite all of their warped past. Yet he simply couldn’t find the words. She was casting a bemused stare up at him, unsure why he’d decided to stall in the vestibule. He normally would have just let the moment pass rather than risk seeming like a sentimental imbecile, but he remembered a comment Miles had made about trying to be a good guy and basing his decisions around what a good guy would do. A good guy wouldn’t let a gesture as thoughtful as the one she’d just granted him go without some form of thanks. Seeing that his voice had chosen that moment to utterly fail him for possibly the first time in his life, he did the only thing he could think of. He leaned in, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and gave her a nearly crushing hug._

_“Ok. This is a little weird.” She groaned with her lungs constricted by the hug. When he didn’t immediately release the embrace she cautiously and awkwardly patted his back. “Yeah yeah. You’re welcome, Monroe.”_

_He quickly pulled himself together and released her. He stood up and attempted to straighten himself up before they walked into the room where the rest of her family waited._

_“You know, you can call me Bass.” He added almost flippantly._

_She seemed to ponder the request for a moment before giving him a sidelong smile. “We’ll see.” Then she grinned fully at him before pulling open the big oak doors and joining the rest of her family._

 

Charlie came to with a weird buzzing sound assaulting her ears. When she glanced up from where her face was buried in Bass’s neck, she watched the glowing screen of the television emitting a static pattern and then slowly fade.    

As quiet returned to the room, she noticed that he had reached up and was clinging to the arm she had draped around his front. Acknowledging that they were both back in the present, his grip tightened and he leaned the side of his face in against hers. Just as in the memory, he seemed to be at a loss for words.

While she’d realized pretty early on that all he really wanted was Miles’s approval, she’d never truly grasped how deep (or pathologically) that need ran until she saw it through his eyes. It didn’t take much stretching of the imagination to see how he had turned to blind obsession when something happened to drive him emotionally haywire. She wondered if the nano had planned that. Could that be the reason they were forced to share these memories together? Were they letting her inside his head so that she could do a better job dealing with him than her uncle did? Is that why the nano had entrusted his care to her instead of his best friend? Watching them interact when she’d first brought Bass to Willoughby, she was a little surprised at how unwilling Miles was to grant him even a little appreciation to his face when she saw how distraught he was when they thought Bass had been executed. Miles might have had some bizarre give and take, emotional blackmail type of situation with his oldest friend, but even without the nano intervention, Charlie just didn’t see why it had to be that difficult.

“Yeah yeah. You’re welcome. Again.” She gave a little half smile, and she could feel the sides of his mouth pulling into a grin against her cheek.

She wasn’t sure why she was still holding him, or why he was still latched onto her, but she didn’t want to let go just yet. It reminded her of the way he felt in the memory with her gripping his hand over his bullet wound. That feeling of basic human contact. It was the first time in as long as she could remember that she was connecting with somebody. Her family had settled down eagerly into their peaceful new world order, and even Miles didn’t seem to understand her anymore. She’d tried to take part in the community and make friends with the townspeople, but despite how nice they were to her, all she could see were the sheep that had gladly watched Monroe be executed and let Truman lead them around like ignorant little lambs to the slaughter. Not to mention that the most exciting thing that ever happened to most of them was when someone spiked the punch at the Christmas hoe-down. Forget making friends, even going home with a guy from the bar on occasion hadn’t provided any more of a connection for her. She’d fought with rebels and toppled empires (twice), taken down trained assassins, turned the power back on (temporarily), stolen a train, conned the proprietor of New Vegas, flown in a helicopter, stopped a nuclear attack on Atlanta, and trekked across the country to find a long lost relative that ended up being the former leader of the continent’s fiercest military. Her parents had caused the blackout and her uncle and his best friend nearly took over the known world. Her life had turned out fairly epic. And these yokels expected her to be impressed and swoon over the fact that they managed to ride some horse that their buddy got bucked off of? Please.

As much as she distrusted them, she couldn’t help but look at what the nano had done to her as a gift. Resurrecting her friend and putting her in charge of their secret weapon not only gave her a purpose again, but also meant that for the first time since toppling the Patriots, she wasn’t alone.

And if the way he was holding her back was any indication, she wasn’t the only one that felt that way. She was smart enough to realize that this could become a problem. Maybe the nano didn’t see it, but she did. For some reason, ever since they were tied up together in that stupid swimming pool by those incompetent bounty hunters, he had shown some inexplicable need to protect her. Sure, he claimed that dragging her drugged and lifeless body out of that bar was a show of faith to earn him a guided trip to Miles’s whereabouts, but there were plenty of times after that where he’d come through for her when there was nothing else to be gained from helping her. Normally she’d find a cold comfort in knowing that one of the most vicious killers on the planet had her back. This time it was different. It had to be different.

_“Charlie.” The voice was calm and welcoming. The charming accent matching the smile on the visitor’s face._

_Despite the cheery greeting, Charlie’s head snapped up instantly from the hide she was preparing in her back yard and revealed a horrified expression. “M… M… Maggie?” She stuttered, as she felt her grip on reality slipping. “You’re dead. You can’t be here!” Charlie gripped the side of her face and dug her palms into her eye sockets, hoping to manually force the crazy out of her brain._

_“We need your help, Charlie.”_

_“We?” Charlie stumbled to her feet and started backing away from the apparition._

_“Don’t be scared Charlie. We mean you no harm.”_

_“You’re not Maggie.” Charlie hissed, putting two and two together and becoming angry at the desecration of her memory of her step mother. “Oh shit. You’re the… This is exactly what Aaron said happened to him at first.” Charlie had surmised the actual identity of her mid-day visitor._

_“We are the technology created by your parents and made sentient by your friend, Aaron you just mentioned.”_

_“I got that part.” Charlie had stopped retreating and started to stand her ground, palming the knife she’d be filleting the fat and subcutaneous tissues off of the deer skin with. “You’re the nano.”_

_“Yes.” Not-Maggie nodded at her._

_“What do you want?”_

_“As we said, we need your help.”_

_“Somehow, I find that hard to believe.” Charlie sneered._

_“There is a war coming. One that will unite us in a single cause and require great effort and sacrifice.”_

_“Not sure if you heard or not, but I’m retired. My whole family is. So while I’m really honored that you thought you’d come to me with this, go pedal your crazy war somewhere else. We’re all stocked up here.” Charlie turned back to the hide she’d been working on before the interruption, hoping that the nano would just go away._

_“What makes you think you’ve got a choice?” The voice was no longer Maggie’s. The familiar words were… someone else’s. Someone else that she never thought she’d see again._

_Charlie spun and looked up at Sebastian Monroe glaring down at her. Unconsciously her jaw dropped, her pupils became blown, and her eyes undoubtedly widened like saucers. Her instinctual response left the nano no doubt that they’d found their mark._

_“No.” Charlie jumped to her feet and advanced on the nano. “You don’t get to be him. I know you think you’re God and that you’ve been able to pull this shit on everybody else, but I’m not them.” She pulled her sword from its scabbard on her hip and stood ready to face off with a billion tiny machines she couldn’t even see._

_Then in the blink of an eye, it was Maggie standing in front of her again. “We know you are not like the others. That is why we’ve come to you.” The nano paused and gave Charlie a soft smile that looked so much like her memories of Maggie that it hurt inside her chest. “This war that is going to come. We have one chance to stop it, and you are crucial to that potential success.”_

_“You can make people spontaneously combust. What the hell do you need me for?”_

_“Sometimes there is more to determining success and failure than what can be calculated objectively. This is something we have learned from watching your kind. Your friends and family in particular.”_

_Charlie was still skeptical and inclined to slash first and give a damn later… if ever._

_“Repeatedly you have continued to fight, when all odds and rational circumstances were against you. Statistically your rebellion against those calling themselves the Patriots should have failed. And yet it did not. There appear to have been some variables within the equation that we had not conceived of. Those immeasurable qualities are something that we can use to our advantage against our new nemesis.”_

_“You do realize that these variables you’re talking about were dumb luck and idiotic stubbornness, right? If there really is some big war coming with something that has you all running for the hills, I hate to break it to you, but nothing we’ve got is going to help you.” Charlie glared at the nano._

_“You will help in ways that you are as of yet unaware.” Nano-Maggie smiled and reached out toward Charlie._

_Charlie took a step back from the outstretched hand. “I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that one.”_

_“We have plans already set in motion that will change the course of this war, if all the assets are utilized correctly.”_

_“You’re saying you have some kind of secret weapon? Then why do you need me?” Charlie was confused, but maybe just the slightest bit intrigued._

_“Even the greatest weapon is ineffective without someone wielding it properly.”_

_“I knew someone once that seemed to think that weapons and power were what won you wars. He bet his entire empire on that principle.” Charlie glowered. “That didn’t end particularly well for him. What makes you think this situation you’re in will be any different?”_

_“Because…” Maggie’s smile turned ominously smug, “This time you and he will be working together.”_

_Charlie’s head cocked to the side, confused because she was certain that they couldn’t have meant what she thought they did._

_“Ensuring that our ‘secret weapon’, as you call it, will remain in play until the penultimate moment in this conflict has been the sole purpose of our every effort for the last half of a solar cycle. To that end, we needed to guarantee that it will be protected by someone that shares our interest in ensuring that its safety remains, despite any personal sacrifices that may be required. That is why we have made the choices that we have about you, Charlie.”_

_“What are you saying?” Charlie was fairly certain that they had just told her that Sebastian Monroe was their secret weapon and that she would be protecting him with her life._

_“I’m saying that you should leave now if you want to make it to that gorge by the time he wakes up.” Maggie flashed her a big bright smile and then turned and started walking toward the tree line._

_Charlie’s feet were striking the ground rapid fire before she even realized she’d intended to start running toward the house to grab supplies. As she reached the back door, she turned to look at the retreating form of her dead step-mother one last time, just as it turned toward her._

_“And you should probably take an extra pair of pants.” Maggie said matter-of-factly before turning again and fading into nothing as she walked toward the tree line._

_Charlie grabbed her weapons, go bag (which she had still kept packed all these months), and a canteen of water. Just before darting out the door, she shrugged, dug through her closet to find Miles’s old go bag, and grabbed a pair of jeans out of it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the last seemingly random wardrobe addendum was about, but adrenaline surged through her body as she allowed herself to entertain the slight hope that the rest of what the nanotech had just told her was true._

Charlie shook off the memory of her encounter with the nanotech that had started this journey, thankful that he apparently couldn’t share in her thoughts. Their intent was clear, however. He was the one that was important. He couldn’t be risking himself to help her anymore. Which was exactly what he’d do if he got even one one hundredth as attached to her as he was to Miles. As much as she didn’t want to, she would have to put a stop to this before it started.

She took one last deep breath, trying to center herself. Instead she was assaulted with the smell of him – musk and a hint of the soap from his bath the night before. It was familiar, but at the same time it was stirring something new in her. There was no denying that she was enjoying the feel of having another body pressed eagerly against her own. It all combined to make her want to hold on to him tighter, to bury her face in his neck and just exist in his arms until everything else went away.

What was she doing? A brief moment of clarity managed to seep into her thoughts that had obviously been clouded by hormones or the nano, or something. God, this was Sebastian Monroe. She was being ridiculous and needed to snap out of whatever insanity was going on in her head.

She dropped her arms from around him and stood up off the couch. It was probably a bit more abrupt than she’d intended, because he was suddenly looking up at her with a slightly lost expression.

“Well, now that that’s taken care of…” Charlie tried to sound detached.

Apparently it worked, because Bass’s face looked confused and then sank even further for a moment before quickly steeling back into a stoic mask. Then, obviously against his will, a yawn broke through. Charlie couldn’t not grin at the sight. His jaw dropped and cropped out to the side slightly as his nose scrunched and his eyes squeezed shut, causing the skin at their corners to crinkle into fine lines.

“Since you didn’t sleep all night, why don’t you get some rest while I go hunt for a while then go into town to meet Aaron?”

He gave her a questioning look.

“There will be plenty of time for you to add some more bruises to the collection when I get back.” She smirked, rubbing at a fist sized spot of deepening purple on her right shoulder.

“Charlie, I…” He looked like he was about to apologize for their sparring.

She interrupted, “You did exactly what I told you to. It’s not your fault I’m out of shape, and it’s damn good incentive for me to get better quick.” She kept her voice no nonsense. There could be no more sentimentality.

He nodded and laid back down on the couch, this time closing his eyes as his head hit the pillow.

She returned to her room, got dressed, and grabbed her bow. As she quietly crossed the living room on her way to the door, she paused to look down at him presumably sleeping curled up on the couch with his back to her. She silently gave a tension-filled sigh.

She’d never had many friends. They were a precious commodity to her, and she’d already lost nearly as many as she’d made in the past few years. He had been her friend when he’d died on that bridge six months earlier. She’d mourned him. Even though she hadn’t shown it the way she did when they’d lost Maggie or Danny or Norah, the pain had been the same. In some ways it had even been worse. Miles had been expected to grieve, and he had. But no one outside the two of them themselves had actually seen the affection growing between the young woman and the former dictator. No one else had understood why his death affected her the way she was showing initially. Charlie wasn’t sure exactly when the shift between them had taken place and couldn’t describe her sentiments to anyone else any better than she could to herself. Trying to justify her grief to those around her was exhausting, so she’d kept it inside. In the quiet times when she sat in the woods at twilight waiting for prey to emerge, or at night as she laid alone in her empty house, she grieved for more than just the loss of a friend. He’d come to represent more than that to her, in life and in retrospect after he was gone. She’d finally realized that in him, she’d found hope. He had been the ultimate epitome of Miles’s assertion that people will always do the stupid selfish thing when given a choice. He’d been a monster, the honest-to-God source and subject of her nightmares. Then, in a time where all she saw was the last shreds of humanity draining out of the remaining population at large, he somehow got his back. If Sebastian Monroe could find redemption, then she had to believe that there was hope for all of them.

She had especially missed his presence as life in the quiet little town of Willoughby dropped back to its pre-Patriot levels of quiescence. Since partnering up with Monroe en route to the town that previous fall, her life had been many things, but it had never been boring. Maybe it was selfish, but as the time that she was supposed to be settled into her “perfect” quiet life in Willoughby dragged out through the months, that was why she missed him the most. She had convinced herself that if he were still around, some sort of excitement would follow. Those were the thoughts that very occasionally, late at night, took her contemplations down an unexpected path. He had been gone, dead, no chance of ever being seen alive again. So she hadn’t let herself read too much into it when the late night fantasies of having a collaborator in whatever thrilling intrigue and adventures her mind cooked up to keep her from perishing of boredom had morphed into them sharing in some other kinds of excitement. Whatever. Apparently, as his memory accidentally pointed out, he’d done the same thing. Not a big deal. It didn’t actually mean anything.

But now, here he was. The man that had existed only in her imagination, brought back to life and on her couch right in front of her. And his return certainly hadn’t disappointed on the excitement front. But as for the rest of it… Their roles were weapon and protector. Any friendship, anything emotional would get in the way of that. She realized with a pang of sadness, that the nano had given her back a purpose and a mission, but not a friend. That was how she had to look at it from this point on.

She looked down at his disheveled hair and gave another silent sigh. How was it possible to miss someone that was right in front of her? She noticed her hand subconsciously reaching out to graze one particularly aberrant tuft of unruly curls, but recalled it just before making contact. She shook her head and walked out the door.

 


	7. The best laid plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plenty more to come on this story. Much of it is already written, so don't worry. I will not abandon this. I've just had a lot going on and it's made writing for this story a little hard lately.

Out amongst the trees and scrubby Texas plant life, Charlie felt her nerves calming. Maybe it was also the break in physical proximity from Monroe. One whole hell of a lot had changed for her in forty-eight hours, and she needed some time to sort things out. For now, she was content just doing the one thing that had always come naturally to her.

She trailed some fresh deer tracks to a small copse she often had good luck near. She sighted the large doe a good distance away from her, chewing on the dwindling new growth off some lower branches of a prickly ash. She loaded an arrow into her crossbow, leveled the weapon, and took aim. Just before she pulled the trigger, motion near the ground caught her eye. It was a newborn fawn struggling to stand on impossibly long and gangly legs. It wasn’t the right time of year for the doe to have recently given birth, and that was the only reason she’d considered taking what she’d thought was a solitary female. She dropped the crossbow immediately with a twinge of guilt for having nearly killed the new mother in front of its young offspring.

“And yet, you’re having trouble controlling your emotions toward the man responsible for me being shot to death in front of you. Perplexing.”

Charlie jerked her body around at her father’s voice. The sudden movement alerted the deer to her presence, and she and the wobbly fawn bolted into the undergrowth. Her instant shock and instinctual longing at seeing her father quickly faded as she realized the actual identity of what stood before her.

“It’s not that simple.” She groaned and reset the safety on her crossbow. “What do you want?” She didn’t try to hide the annoyance in her voice.

It was her father’s face and voice, but like nearly every other time she interacted with the nano, the speech patterns just weren’t right. “We are worried about Sebastian’s reaction yesterday.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you sprung that memory on him. I can’t read people’s thoughts, and even I knew that would crush him.” She threw at the apparition as she tossed her crossbow back over her shoulder and began inspecting the ground for any other signs of game to track.

“You feel that we are causing you both stress by restoring his memories so quickly.” Not-Ben stated more than asked.

“It is kind of hard to practice our fighting skills when we’re incapacitated every time we touch.” Charlie added.

“Then we will further ration the return of his remaining memories, as your training has become even more pressing of a concern.” The figment began to follow her as she set off following the trail of some large birds she hoped would be wild turkeys.

Charlie sighed. “I bet this is the part where you tell me that our mysterious enemy has stepped up its timetable and we’re going to be doing battle sooner than you thought.”

“For a being without the ability to interpret the neurotransmissions of others, you are quite perceptive.”

Charlie rolled her eyes. “So, does that mean you’re finally going to tell us what we’re up against?”

Nano-Ben began, “Despite our success at governing some of this planet’s lesser species, we have found consistent flaws in our efforts to directly control the minds and actions of humans.”

“I’m not going to apologize for that.” Charlie huffed, remembering what had happened to Aaron’s ex-wife.

“We did not expect that you would.” If Charlie wasn’t mistaken, it almost just sounded like the nano was getting sassy with her. They continued, “You’re thoughts and emotions continued to be able to override our control. Despite alterations we made to our peripheral systems, we were not able to adapt a method that could allow us to compensate for every unique variation in your human psyches. It was then decided that the next logical progression of our experimentation should focus on being able to stop production of detrimental thoughts rather than manipulate them.”

Charlie was horrified by the causal way the nano was discussing mind control.

“Since all thoughts, memories, and emotions are nothing but electrical impulses firing between synapses within your cerebral cortices, we began attempting to create an exception in our programming that would allow for the blockade of biological electrical impulses in a similar manner to how we are able to block those produced by your electrical devices.”

“But I thought you couldn’t change your own programming.” This was an area where Charlie knew she would quickly be out of her depth. “Isn’t that why you needed Aaron to fix that fatal error in your code?”

“Other people with computer programming skills remain, including many which were far more susceptible to our control attempts than Aaron. With their assistance, we altered a small subset of nanites.”

“If everything that happens in our brain is just electrical signals, and you made nanites that can stop any electrical signal they want…” Charlie was able to grasp where this was going. “They can kill anything instantly.”

“You must believe that that was not our intent.” Ben seemed to plead with her.

“But?” Charlie knew what was coming.

“The programmers we had access to were not as proficient as those that created us. They did not realize that the coding error that Aaron had patched was in fact a virus. That virus continued to mutate and had infected some of the nanites used in our experiment. The results were catastrophic.”

“I get why a bunch of serial killer nanites is a problem for us, but why do you care?” Charlie sensed that this was going to go over her head soon.

“These infected nanites have no regulations on the source of energy that they can dissipate. It allows them to incapacitate us as well.”

“If these new super nanites can shut off our brains at will, what are Bass and I supposed to be able to do to help you?” Charlie was not seeing the big picture yet.

“The initial experimental sample size was quite small, a few thousand nanites. That would be barely enough to begin controlling a single human.”

“I’m guessing there are more now?” Charlie asked, sounding frustrated.

“The virus altered two basic functions in our core code. It removed restrictions on replication and incapacitated the ability for external control of our individual nanites.”

“So now they’re multiplying and out of control. Great. That doesn’t sound familiar at all.” Charlie couldn’t ignore the irony. “So how many are there now, and how are we still supposed to help?”

“There was one drawback to the original experimental programming changes.” Ben replied, sounding slightly disappointed. “The ability to neutralize biologically created electrical impulses requires extensive amounts of energy itself. The affected nanites were bound to the initial organic test subjects. We were working on a solution to the problem when we discovered the viral mutation and some of the nanites became rogue.”

“You mean that if they want to control living things they have to use them like a power source? They’re stuck inside them?”

“For the time being, the affected nanites remain obligatory parasites.” Ben confirmed.

“What happens if you kill the host?” Charlie was sure that it couldn’t be that simple.

“The nanites are deactivated when their power source is depleted.”

Was that why they needed Bass? Because they thought he’d have no problem mowing down a few random people for the greater good. There had to be plenty of people that didn’t require resurrection that would have been up for the task.

“What am I missing, because this doesn’t sound as dire as you made it out to be earlier.”

“The aberrations…”

Charlie interrupted, “That’s what you call them? Catchy. Sounds evil.” Off an unamused look from her father she dropped her head in apology. “Go on.”

“The aberrations have multiplied exponentially and begun occupation of a formerly abandoned town in Idaho. At last count they controlled seventy-six humans.”

Charlie felt conflicted. Seventy-six wasn’t a huge number of people, but it was a lot for just her and Bass. Why not get more people involved and just go in and wipe them all out quickly. “Why does it have to be just me and Bass? Why didn’t you just tell the Patriots before it got even this far. They could have just gone in with a platoon and taken them all out.”

“We can’t risk that level of exposure.” Ben replied. Seeing that the answer had not satisfied her, he continued, “All of the affected humans are currently contained within Bradbury. We used a classified military base there as the site for our experimentation. The humans are all our original potential test subjects and others utilized as personnel. The site was contained, with no humans able to enter or leave after the experimentation began, in case of complications. If a large number of people enter the site, there is a greater risk for contamination and spread out into the human population. If that should happen, the aberrations will spread like a pandemic.”

“What do you mean, contamination?” Charlie wasn’t sure when they started talking about diseases.

“Direct transmission is required for the aberrant nanites to infect a new host.”

“What kind of direct transmission?” She asked warily.

“To exert control over the human body, they tend to cluster near the brainstem. Transmission occurs when they travel from the inferior salivatory nucleus in the glossopharyngeal nerve to the parotid gland, then penetrate the dermis of the recipient.”

“You lost me.” Charlie admitted.

“Infection occurs when someone is bitten by one of the hosts.” He admitted somewhat ashamedly.

“Holy shit, Bass was right! You made zombies!” Charlie’s scream certainly scared off any game nearby.

“That is not an accurate assessment.” Ben corrected. “The aberrations do not cause the host to require ingesting flesh or cerebral tissue, as your cultural folklore surrounding the creatures known as ‘zombies’ describes.”

“But the people have no control over themselves and wander around mindlessly infecting others by biting them.” Charlie scowled.

Nano-Ben slowly rocked his head side-to-side, as if weighing the merits of her statement. “Portions of your description may not be entirely inaccurate.” The admission seemed to make him uncomfortable. “The more important subject is the necessity of destroying them. The power source complication binding the aberrations to their organic hosts was a confounding problem, but not ultimately insurmountable.”

Charlie was pretty sure that they’d just abruptly changed the subject on her. “About how long until they surmount it?” She looked warily at her imposter-father.

“We do not know for sure, but we have seen concerning developments.”

“Such as?” Charlie groaned.

“Our experimentation began on insects and then rodents and small birds. The aberrations have always been capable of possessing these less advanced life forms, as we have been. While no infected humans have been able to escape the containment in Bradbury, we have seen evidence that aberrations in these lesser forms may have escaped containment.”

“So they could already be spreading this nanite plague all over? We may already be too late? That’s what you’re saying?” Charlie felt a small amount of panic rising in her gut.

“Fortunately, spread to the human population is not a concern. The individual nanites must undergo specialized updates within their coding to accommodate energy absorption from each specific form of host organic material. As long as the more advanced aberrations in Bradbury do not develop the necessary adaptation to exist without their hosts, the human population is safe. However, if they do discover the way to exist extracorporeally, then they will already have spread throughout the continent and there will be no hope of containing them.”

“So we have to stop them before they figure out how to live without their human batteries.” Charlie was pretty sure she’d understood all of that.

“Precisely.”

“How long do you think we have?”

“Based on our mathematical predictions of their exponential growth rate and coinciding gains in group task processing ability, we expect that they will achieve host independence within six to eight weeks.”

They had under six weeks to save the world. It was a tall order for just her, Bass, and Aaron. “We can’t do this alone. We’re going to need more help.”

“You wish to involve your family.” The nano seemed confused.

“Of course I do. Miles and my mom, this is right up their alley. Mom created you and Miles can fight his way out of anything. I honestly don’t know why you didn’t go to them in the first place.”

“They do seem to be the more logical option. That is part of the reason we have chosen to exclude them from this endeavor. The aberrations possess the same logic algorithms, and can easily create counter-measures for attacks with a high probability of occurring. That is why your family must not learn of this. At least not yet.”

“You just said that’s only part of the reason. What’s the rest?” Charlie hadn’t missed that particular word choice.

“As we mentioned to you before, our selection process for determining which individual held the greatest potential for defeating the aberrations included analysis of an extensive number of variables, many of which currently exceed your comprehension.” As if sensing that Charlie was about to object, they continued, “Though we believe they will become more clear to you in time.”

“Whatever.” Charlie was getting sick of the way they seemed to enjoy holding things back from her. Could the nano actually enjoy things? That seemed like a debate for another time. “Are we done here? Because I need to hunt if you want your secret weapon to eat this week.” She turned and looked out across the forest, hoping to spot some signs of game.

“That is all. For now.”

By the time Charlie turned around again, the nano manifestation was gone.

…..

Bass stretched, feet and arms sticking out far past the edges of Charlie’s dingy couch. Sure he’d slept on worse, but if this arrangement was going to last much longer, they may have to have a discussion about the accommodations. He let out an exaggerated yawn, which stretched the bruised skin over his cheekbone where the girl had cold-cocked him the day before while sparring. He grimaced a bit and rubbed at the slightly swollen and undoubtedly darkened spot on his face. No question that damn girl was a Matheson. Not only could she land a punch, but she’d gone from hot to cold and back again more times than he could count since he’d returned to the land of the living. It was probably better that way. Alliance and even friendship had seemed to always come just a bit too easily with Charlie. However well they got along, she was still… her, and he was still… him, and that just screamed “recipe for disaster” in every possible way.

He shook his head, still attempting to propel himself into full wakefulness. Based on the angle at which the sun was streaming in the windows, it couldn’t have been much before noon. He felt rather lazy having slept until midday, but he hadn’t even closed his eyes all night, so he supposed it evened out.

After hitting the outhouse, he rummaged through the bag of stuff Charlie had procured for him in town. There was another set of clothes and some toiletries. Nothing that would hold his interest for long. Then he looked through the bag of weapons she’d picked up from Miles. There was a pretty good assortment and enough ammo for training purposes. They’d need more when the time came to actually fight, but she’d done well with choices that would work for training and not arouse suspicion.

The rumbling from his stomach reminded him that it was actually lunch time, and he wandered into the kitchen, where he made himself a sandwich with some bread and the last remnants of dried meat that he found in the small pantry. As he was standing in front of the icebox with the door open and the mouth of the glass milk bottle about to hit his lips, he heard the front door swing open. Initially he assumed it would be Charlie, but he quickly realized that the footfalls were too heavy across her threshold. There was an intruder.

Noiselessly he returned the milk to the icebox shelf and closed the door. Then he drew both his blades and hugged as close to the wall as the cabinetry would allow as he crept toward the door separating the kitchen and living room. Bass heard the creak of the poorly-secured floorboard he had noticed approximately three feet from the door, and he mentally calculated the intruder’s position. He took a deep centering breath and then flung himself, sword and machete raised to the height to do the maximum possible damage, around the doorway. He barely managed to draw back the impending death blow when recognition of the man before him registered.

“Jesus Aaron!” Having been forced to instantaneously overcome a good deal of momentum to prevent what should have been a fatal strike, Bass ended up dropping his weapons and bracing his hands on his knees.

Aaron stumbled back a few steps, then after a couple wheezy breaths and barely recovering from the shock of Monroe nearly attacking him, he retorted, “You almost just killed me! Why are _you_ mad?”

“Because you just made me almost kill you!” Bass still sounded angry as he yelled.

“That makes no sense!” Aaron yelled back.

They both managed to catch their breath and regain a small amount of composure.

“What were you doing?” Bass asked, his voice still hinting at irritation.

“Charlie never showed for our meeting today. I was worried so I came to look for her.” Aaron answered.

“Then why the hell were you sneaking around?” Bass asked, confused.

“I was afraid that something had happened to her.”

“Well, if you thought she was in trouble, her house was a pretty stupid place to start. I’ve been here the whole time…” Bass trailed off when he began to recognize the look he was getting from the portly man. “Unless you thought that I was the one that did something to her…” He noticed for the first time that Aaron was holding onto the baseball bat that Charlie kept hidden in the umbrella stand by the front door.

“Yeah… Well…” Aaron stammered unapologetically.

As annoying as it was to be that mistrusted, the fact that Hungry Hungry Hippo was willing to take on General Sebastian Monroe with just a piece of flimsy wood for protection in order to help Charlie made Bass somewhat willing to forgive the man. Even as president of the Republic, he’d never managed to garner that kind of loyalty from anyone.

“And what did you really think you were going to do with that?” Bass smirked as he picked up his sword and machete from the floor and slid them back into the scabbards on his belt.

“Bash your head in.”

Looking at Aaron with a raised eyebrow, Bass effortlessly swatted the baseball bat out of his grip and sent it skittering across the living room floor. “Good luck with that.”

“You do realize that you’re just lending credence to my theory that this is all some kind of bad Pet Cemetery type situation?” Aaron mumbled.

“Seriously? Alright. This is getting repetitive, so let’s just get it all out now. Got any more zombie references you want to throw at me? World War Z? Twenty-eight Days Later? Resident Evil? Evil Dead? Walking Dead? Night of the Living Dead? Dawn of the Dead? Shaun of the Dead?”  

“I think that about covers it.” Aaron sighed. “So where is Charlie?”

Bass rolled his eyes. “She left a while ago to go hunt. Said that after that she was gonna head into town. You probably just missed her.”

“You’re not worried?” Aaron seemed to be on the verge of panic.

“Charlotte’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.” He thought it was somewhat funny that after everything Mr. Buttersworth over here had been through with her, everything he’d seen her do, that he still seemed to see her as a little girl that needed protection all the time.

Aaron just continued to stare at him. “Sure she can. When it’s a fair fight.”

Then, as if the other man actually summoned the visions into his head, Bass recalled the numerous times that he’d had to fend off one or more of Charlie’s would-be attackers – the Tower, that bar, the old school house. “But when does she ever pick a fair fight?” Bass groaned and walked over toward the bag of weapons. He slammed a magazine home into a handgun, loaded the chamber, and tossed the piece to Aaron, who barely managed to not shoot himself, while he repeated the motion with another and shoved it into the back of his pants. They both started toward the back of the house. “Let’s go find her.”

“Find who?” Charlie said, standing in the back doorway, holding a dead turkey by the legs.

Bass visibly deflated and Aaron let out an audible moan of relief. “When you didn’t show up in town, I thought something must have happened.”

“He thought I killed you in your sleep.” Bass looked smug.

Charlie gave Aaron a disbelieving glare.

“What? Six months ago you and Miles come down from the mountain like Moses with this story about how Sebastian Monroe just sacrificed himself to save the country. I mean, I get that some shit went down while I was off with Priscilla, but it wasn’t that long before that that we were all trying to kill each other.” He waved a hand between them and Bass. “And then who knows what the nano did to BRING HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD?”

“Aaron,” Charlie sounded exasperated, “Monroe is on our team now. The nano brought him back for a reason. You’re gonna have to trust that.”

“Trusting the nano is still asking a little much right now.” Aaron answered bitterly.

“Then trust me.” Charlie’s voice was full of conviction.

“Fine.” Aaron huffed resignedly. “Look at me, I’m on Team Monroe.” He waved a finger in a circle in the air in mock excitement. “I’d say we need a logo or a flag or something, but…” His glance dropped to Charlie’s right wrist.

Bass narrowed his eyes at the other man and barely contained the growl that threatened to escape his throat. He wasn’t sure exactly when Pittman had decided he was no longer afraid of him, but maybe it was time for a reminder.

Suddenly Charlie was between them, a hand firmly on Bass’s chest, the look in her eyes an obvious warning. “Enough. We’ve got bigger problems.”

Bass looked down and realized that she was actually touching him without them being thrust into a memory. He turned to her with a questioning look.

“Yeah. Had a little conversation with the nano this morning. That’s why I’m running late.”

“What’d they tell you?” Bass asked.

“A lot actually. But I don’t think either of you are going to like it.” Charlie sighed.

 

…..

 

“THEY MADE ZOMBIES?” Bass’s voice boomed, and Charlie found herself having to stifle laughter at the fact that he had the exact same reaction to the news that she’d had.

“Not exactly, but close enough.” Charlie replied as she shoved a spit through the plucked and dressed turkey carcass. The bird would take nearly forever to cook over the open fire in her back yard, but Charlie didn’t have any better options at the moment. Someone had eaten the last of her smoked meat while she’d been out.

Bass helped her lift the skewered turkey, and they placed it on the rotisserie.

Aaron paused from stoking the fire to look up at her. “Did they tell you any more about the virus?”

“Just that it let them replicate without limits and blocked outside control of the nanites.”

Aaron took a deep breath. “I don’t think this virus is an accident.” Once the others were both looking at him, he looked to Charlie and continued nervously, “Remember at the Tower, how I said that there was a back door in the nanotech programming that had been left open? I think… I think they used that backdoor to plant a virus that made the nano go from controlled focused weapon to causing a worldwide blackout.”

“Who?” Bass looked less than convinced.

“The Patriots.” Charlie whispered

“Now you two are starting to sound like those conspiracy nuts.” Bass teased.

Aaron looked to Bass. “You weren’t around towards the end of the Patriots. The things the higher ranking ones said at their trials… They thought they were cleansing the planet. That the righteous would survive and all the less desirable would be culled. Real Third Reich kind of shit.”

Bass visibly shivered. “Well, guess it’s good to know the why of it all, but that doesn’t do jack towards helping us survive against these new killer nanite zombies.”

“Actually…” Aaron interrupted. “I’d have to see the virus, but based on what you’re describing, it can’t be too complex. Any significant piece of extraneous code would have been picked up by the non-Patriots working on the project – your mom and dad at least.” He nodded at Charlie. “It’s possible that I could come up with something that could counteract the virus, get the rogue nanites…”

“The aberrations.” Charlie corrected.

“Catchy.” Bass smarmed. Again Charlie found it slightly disconcerting that he had a nearly identical reaction to hers.

“Whatever. The aberrations… I could get them under control and maybe even destroy them.” Aaron finished.

“What would you need?” Bass asked, sounding well aware that the logistics of what he was discussing were undoubtedly next to impossible.

“A computer. A copy of the aberrations’ code and the virus. Some kind of terminal capable of uploading to the nanites. And time.” Aaron answered.

“You forgot to ask for electricity.” Bass scoffed.

“What you’ve asked for can be arranged.”

They all turned suddenly to see Nora sitting on a stump across the fire pit from them.

“The facility in Bradbury has the capabilities you will require.” Nora continued as she stood and advanced toward them.

Charlie knew it was the nano, and when she turned to look at the two men next to her, Aaron had already obviously come to the same conclusion but Bass looked petrified. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah. This is what they do. Bass, meet the nano. Nano, Bass.” She looked back and forth between them.

“We are already well acquainted with Sebastian.”

“Yeah. That’s not creepy at all.” Bass leaned down to whisper in Charlie’s ear.

“We can also still hear you.” Nora glowered at them.

Bass grimaced and raised his hands in defeat.

“Great. When do we leave for this Bradbury place?” Aaron asked anxiously.

“Small problem.” Charlie chimed in. “That’s where all the aberrations are.”

“That is true.” Nora confirmed. “You will need to arrive there only when you are completely prepared. The longer you spend inside the compound, the greater the risk that you will be contaminated by the aberrations.”

“Well, how am I supposed to identify and write computer code without a computer?” Aaron groaned. “Unless you all plan on turning the lights back on for me.” He looked at Nora optimistically.

“We cannot allow normal electrical function for you here in Willoughby.”

“Because that would just make it too easy.” Bass snarked.

“Because if we allow the electricity to return, the aberrations will be able to detect it and know that we are planning against them.” Nora answered tersely.

Aaron spoke up next, “So, again I ask, how am I supposed to work on computer code without a computer?”

Nora answered, “We can provide you with access to the code if you will simply allow us…”

“Nuh uh. No way!” Aaron yelled. “There is no chance in Hell I let you back in my head to mess with my mind.”

“Very well.” Nano-Nora seemed disappointed but willing to work with them. “We will find an alternative method to provide you with the information you need.”

“What if I need help?” Aaron wasn’t done with the nano yet. “I wrote the basic source coding for the operating system, but the DOD did a lot of things to it after that. I may need someone with more knowledge…”

“As we have already told Charlotte, we cannot allow you to involve Rachel Matheson at this time.”

Bass perked up at that statement, “Hey. Finally something we can agree on.” Charlie elbowed him in the ribs.

“Nor can Miles Matheson know of your return.” Nora glared at Bass.

“Let’s be reasonable about this.” Bass argued.

“We are far more controlled by reason and logic than your kind could ever hope to be. And need we remind you…”

“Yeah yeah…” Bass grumbled. “Play by your rules or it’s game over for me.”

Nora nodded curtly. “As long as there are no other matters of importance, I will leave you to your preparations.” And like that, she was gone.

“Ok.” Bass ran a hand down his face. “This whole ghosts of Christmas past thing is getting real annoying.”

Aaron cocked his head at Bass but spoke to Charlie. “Huh. Sounds like Monroe, but what it says implies that it has a conscience.”

Charlie gave Aaron’s shoulder a gentle shove to keep Bass from driving a sword through it.

“Are we gonna have a problem here, Pillsbury? Because I seem to remember me saving your ass at least once and never getting so much as a thank you for it, let alone an apology for all those times you tried to help get me killed.” Bass was attempting to seem menacing.

Aaron gave Charlie a disbelieving look, to which she flatly replied, “He’s big on the thank you’s. It’s a thing.” Then her tone became authoritative. “And you could try being nice. He’s not that guy anymore.” Then she turned to Bass and spoke like she was scolding a disobedient puppy, “And you, no threatening our guests.”

Bass looked affronted and opened his mouth to retort, but he recognized the no nonsense look in Charlie’s eyes and silently turned back to the roasting bird. It was official. Aaron was the brains, he was the brawn, and she was their leader. It might as well have been one of those comic book superhero movies that were so popular right before the blackout.

“I probably need to get back to town. Lunch period has already lasted too long.” Aaron supplied uncomfortably. “The kids can’t really teach themselves. Well, I guess they can. They just wouldn’t be very good at it.”

“You should come back tonight.” Charlie offered, appearing to feel a little guilty about snapping at the men. “Help us eat this thing.” She motioned toward the turkey.

“Thanks, but if we really only have six weeks to find some way to destroy these aberrations without using any electricity, I think I’m gonna need every second of that time to work on this.”

“Realistically, you got four weeks. Max.” Bass corrected. “The trip to BFE, Idaho is gonna take about 2 weeks at best. We’ll need to have all our shit together and a plan in place before we head out.”

“Great.” Aaron grumbled. “Even better.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow. See if there’s any way I can help.” Charlie offered.

He nodded, the look in his eyes more than a little incredulous that there would be any way that Charlie could help with what he had to do, but appreciative of the gesture all the same. Then he set off around the side of the little house toward the main road that would take him back into the main portion of town.

Aaron’s departure left the remaining pair of would-be super heroes in a slightly awkward silence. The meat wouldn’t finish cooking for hours, and Bass couldn’t stand the idea of any more talking. It seemed like the more he talked to people since his return, the weirder and weirder shit got.

“So…” Charlie also seemed to be struggling to find some kind of distraction.

“More sparring?” Bass asked, attempting to hide the hint of excitement that attempted to sneak into his voice with the prospect of doing something besides standing around uncomfortably or talking.

“Yeah. Sounds good.” Charlie quickly agreed and went into the house to grab their things.


	8. Teaching and learning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know I have been gone for over a year. I recently have had a little bit of free time and a renewed desire to write again. I have the whole plot for this story outlined and some of the future chapters were already written long ago, and I just really love where I know this story is going to go, so I want to try and get it out. It seems like there are still some people keeping this fandom alive, so I figured that maybe I will try to get this thing finished. No, I am not going to be adding to or updating any of my other stories or writing anything new for Revo. Once I get this one finished (and I have no idea how long that will take) I am going to focus on some original (not fanfic) story ideas I have been kicking around. Hope everyone enjoys.

“You’re still sticking your elbow out.” Bass grunted in aggravation. Then he walked up behind her, kicked her left foot outward slightly, and put a hand on her left elbow and the other on the side of her rib cage under her right armpit.

Charlie’s mind registered somewhere in its depths that she should be reacting to the intrusion. Anger at his audacity in just walking up and putting his hands on her. Other feelings about the way his hands actually felt on her. Something. Instead her mind was clear, her focus unwavering, and her interpretation of his actions was true. It was purely instructional. He was the deadliest, most efficient fighter she’d ever seen, and he was helping her to become the same. She would need to be if they were going to stop the aberrations in a month’s time. She didn’t have time for anything that wouldn’t expressly help that goal. It had to be strictly business.

“Now do it again.” He barked in her ear.

Charlie brandished a sword in each hand, took a deep centering breath, and began the planned routine against an imaginary attacker again. Jab right, step forward, block left, spin right, parry with the right sword, slice with the left, right elbow, step forward, double slash with both swords. Despite the intricate moves and steps, Bass stayed glue to her back, ghosting her through the entire maneuver. She wouldn’t even have known he was there if not for the constant pressure of his hands on her shoulder and side. His movements and foot placement mirrored hers perfectly, and it almost reminded Charlie of dancing, in a macabre kind of way. As she made the double slashing move, she felt the pressure of his hands increase, a reminder not to let her left elbow drift away from her torso. She forced her body to keep her elbow in as she finished the final move, and he was right. She could feel that there was more power in her swing when she had the proper form.

“Better.” He said flatly as he removed his hands and stepped back. He walked around until he was in front of her and repeated, “Again.”

Charlie went through the motions again, actively forcing her arm to stay close to her body.

“Good. But you’re still thinking too hard. It’s gotta be second nature. No time to think about your form in a fight.” Even his compliments still came with critiques.

There was a scathing retort on the tip of her tongue, but she held it. They were doing this for her to learn, and he was right. Though she would never tell him that to his face.

They had abandoned the attempt at sparring rather quickly, when it became apparent that today’s outcome was going to be no different than the previous day’s. The lesson turned instructive rather than competitive, and it seemed to be far more beneficial. Bass was surprised at how quickly Charlie managed to assimilate the techniques he was teaching her, and Charlie was rather surprised that Bass turned out to be a pretty decent instructor. He had given her some pointers when they’d traveled together from the Plains to Willoughby that first time, but neither had really trusted the other at that point, and she had taken nearly everything he’d said with a generous helping of resentment.

He reached out and took the swords from her. “Try this.” He instructed before going through a new set of moves involving a higher proportion of double sword slashes.

Charlie watched, quickly committing the routine to memory. When he finished, Bass held out both swords to her. She took them and proceeded to recreate the series of moves he’d just performed, making certain she didn’t let her elbow stick out at all.

“Your arm’s doing better, but your footwork’s getting sloppy. Right foot’s leading a fraction of a second early. Gives away your intent.”

Charlie huffed and sighed dejectedly.

“Hey, we’ve been at this for a while now.” Bass seemed to realize her frustration and took pity on her. “We should probably check on the turkey.”

“But I didn’t get it perfect yet.” There was determination in her voice.

“Yeah, but trying to practice technique when you’re tired isn’t going to end well. You’ve done enough for today. Now take a break and you’ll do even better tomorrow.”

She eyed him suspiciously as he began collecting the weapons they had left strewn about their practice yard.

“What?” He asked off her unsettling glare.

“Just wondering when you actually became not horrible at this whole training people thing.” She still sounded skeptical as she said it.

He laughed at her briefly as they began walking toward the house together. “I’ll tell you over dinner.”

Charlie stared at him, trying to determine if she was getting a brush off, or if he really would tell her later. The question had been rhetorical, but now that she knew there was potentially a story behind it, her interest was piqued.

The turkey was ready just as the sun started dipping below the horizon. It had given them just enough time to stow their gear and get cleaned up before working together to pull the bird from the spit. Bass began carving it while Charlie transferred the hot embers from their rotisserie pit to her smoker. Whatever they didn’t eat tonight would be smoked and dried for later.

They prepared their meal in a comfortable silence. It was similar to how they’d worked together on the road before coming to Willoughby, just without the underlying tension and distrust. They kind of both had this understanding that they didn’t need to fill the silence with pointless chatter when they had things to do. Though when there weren’t any chores to tend to or need for focus on the road ahead, Bass was usually the one to break first if the silence got particularly protracted, or more likely, he got bored.

They were about halfway through their meal and nearly all the way through the first glass of whiskey they’d each poured themselves to go with the dinner, when Bass, as usual, decided it was time to start up a conversation. “So, did Miles ever tell you what we did before the blackout?”

Charlie finished her mouthful of turkey and reheated canned green beans before responding to what she believed was a rather random question. “Said you were in the military. The marine branch or something.”

“The Marines.” He corrected quickly.

“Sure. Whatever.” Charlie shrugged. It was all the same to her now.

“But he never told you about what we actually did?”

“I assume it involved killing people.” She shrugged.

Bass snorted a little and put down the fork full of food he’d been lifting toward his mouth. “Yeah, in the beginning, we did a lot of that. Our country was at war and we ended up fighting over in Iraq. After our first tour overseas they let us train as snipers. When we went back for a second tour, the situation on the ground was even hairier and our new skillset tended to put us right in the thickest shit there was out there.”

“So, like I said. You killed people. Sounds like a lot of people.” Charlie wasn’t sure where this was going.

Something almost imperceptibly changed in Bass’s eyes as he continued. Charlie couldn’t outright identify what it was, but they just looked darker and more withdrawn. “We were two weeks from the end of our second tour when our Humvee hit an IED on the way back to base from a mission. It was a trap and what was left of our convoy ended up taking heavy fire. Half the guys didn’t make it back. Miles and I were the only ones from our vehicle that survived, though Miles almost didn’t. Shrapnel tore through his gut and he almost bled out before we got back to base.”

Charlie had gone nearly pale. She couldn’t believe that this was the first she was hearing about Miles’s brush with death pre-blackout. “How badly were you injured?” She couldn’t stop herself from asking.

He chortled. “Me? I got off lucky. Piece of metal sliced through my leg, but missed the femoral artery by a couple millimeters. Some stitches and crutches for a couple weeks and I barely even had a scar to show for my troubles. Miles got the worst of it. Doctors had to take his spleen and patch up some intestines. Fucker was in a medical coma for the better part of a week. When he finally came out of it, the brass promoted us to Sergeants and sent us back stateside to some cushy jobs working as instructors at the training facility at Parris Island.”

That made the story suddenly click into place for Charlie. He was actually answering her question from earlier. “So that’s how you started training people.”

“Yup. I was mostly hand-to-hand combat stuff, Miles did more of the marksmanship stuff.”

“I can’t really picture Miles teaching people. He’s just too…”

“…Miles.” Bass finished. “Yeah. The communicating part was never really his strong suit, but before the blackout and everything, even though he was still Miles, he was a little less… _Miles_.”

The comment made Charlie smile. She understood exactly what he meant. “How long were you two instructors?”

“A little over three years before the blackout hit.”

Charlie just nodded and kept on eating. This whole discussion had quickly become far more personal and deep than she had ever expected when she’d asked him about his aptitude for teaching.

“And I did have my own Militia there for a while. Who did you think trained most of them? At least in the early years.” He was staring at her, his elbows on the table and his chin propped up on his hands with what was certainly supposed to be a charming smile spread across his face.

It dawned on Charlie how surreal this moment was. Even disregarding the fact that he’d been recently resurrected from the dead, she was still sitting at her meager little dinner table having a casual discussion about the Militia with the man that, until about two years ago, had been the evil dictator mercilessly ruling a quarter of the continent.

“And now all you’ve got is me.” Charlie quipped back.

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve trained a lot of guys, and not one of them has had your natural ability with a sword. Must run in the family.”

“It’s still gonna be two against nearly eighty. Even if it was you and Miles, I still wouldn’t take that bet.” Charlie voiced the concern that had been weighing on her ever since the nano had filled her in on their situation.

“Hey, don’t forget. We got Stay Puft working with us too.”

“I love Aaron like family, but we both know he’s not going to be helping us win any fights.” Charlie added derisively.

“I still figure the nano’s got something up their sleeve, ‘cause if they’ve chosen just us, specifically, to send into this epic shitstorm, they have to have a reason and something that makes them think we’ll come out on top.” Bass stated calmly as he scraped remnants of his meal into one last forkful of food and crammed it into his mouth.

“Let’s hope you’re right.” Charlie’s response lacked any real enthusiasm as she shrugged and took her empty dishes over to the sink. She wasn’t ready to grant the nano any concessions yet.

Bass joined her a moment later as she finished cleaning off her plate with the bucket of water they’d brought in from the well earlier. They silently went through the motions of cleaning up and setting the remnants of the turkey in the smoker to cure. Once they were done with the evening chores, they cleaned up and both sat down in her living room, him on the couch and her in the chair across the room.

Charlie collected a book off the side table and curled her legs up under her as she settled in. Bass fidgeted momentarily, looked longingly at the defunct television, then went back to fidgeting.

“Got a problem, Monroe?” Charlie asked without taking her eyes from her book.

“It’s like, what? Nine o’clock? And you’re just gonna curl up with a book and then fall asleep?” He asked incredulously.

“Pretty much.” Charlie answered back, still not looking up from her reading.

“And this is what you do every night?”

“Sometimes I’ll head into town and drink at the bar for a while. Can’t really do that with you tagging along anymore, so yeah. This is what we’re left with.” She answered with a shrug and finally lowered the book as she addressed him.

“You have got to be kidding me.” He grumbled. “How have you not already died of boredom? I mean, I’m sure whatever it is you’re reading over there is riveting…” He noticed the title as Charlie had lifted the book back up to continue reading and blocking out his inevitable rant. “Seriously? A Tale of Two Cities?”

“What? Aaron lent it to me. Said it’s a classic or something.” She shrugged again. “And it’s dark out. It’s not like we can keep training.”

Bass scoffed, “I’ll give you a tale of two cities.” Then he seemed to, amidst his grumbling, have an epiphany. “No. Really. Two cities. We’ll start with Ann Arbor and Cleveland.”

…..

“And then the team that took the west flank to start crosses behind one final time and comes up behind the last pocket of adversaries, taking them by surprise.”

“And that’s how you and Miles captured what city again?” Charlie asked. She and Bass were sprawled out on her living room floor, the sparse pieces of furniture that had previously been arranged throughout the room now pushed to its periphery, and the floor littered with objects that were all stand-ins for various battlements, squadrons, soldiers, and geographic features.

“South Bend Indiana.” He answered almost wistfully. “Hell of a place. Home to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish before the blackout.” As he sat up and rocked back onto his heels, he noticed the ebbing of darkness through Charlie’s front window. They had been at it all night. He had assumed a discussion of military tactics would bore her to sleep relatively quickly. Instead she had become enthralled. She took in every word, analyzed every move and decision. There was only one other person he’d ever seen with such an inborn talent for it, and given who that person was, he really shouldn’t have found her interest and ability to be that much of a surprise. Hell. She’d even spotted other options in some of their less successful battle plans. If they’d had her, they might have taken Trenton on the first try.

“Is that the place from the story with the hunchback? I thought that was in Europe. And why were they fighting with Ireland?” Charlie looked at him, confused.

Bass chuckled. “Notre Dame, not Notre Dame. It was a college. The fighting Irish were their sport mascot…” They’d been talking about military strategy for eight hours and he’d held her rapt attention, but he couldn’t get two sentences in to talking about college football before her eyes glazed over. “Never mind. Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

“Sometimes I forget how old and irrelevant you are.” She smirked back at him.

He looked like he was readying a retort, but stifled it. “Well, this old man should probably get some sleep if we want today’s training to be any kind of effective.”

“Fine.” Charlie huffed, sounding almost disappointed. Then she got up from where she had sat cross-legged in front of their strategic diorama on the living room floor and headed into her bedroom.

Bass envied the ease with which she unfolded her legs and stood without pain. Even with the nano upgrades, his knees still couldn’t tolerate that level of contortion for hours on end. As she closed the door behind her, he suddenly had to push aside the unexpected and unbidden thought of what other activities she could clearly excel at with legs that limber.

He glanced over to his make shift bed and sighed. He could already feel the knot forming in his lower back from another round of attempting to sleep draped over the glorified love seat. He cleaned up the items strewn across the floor and returned them to their usual places before curling up on the small couch. They really were going to have to discuss the sleeping arrangements.

…..

Both of the small house’s occupants were awoken with a start when the front door slammed open a few hours later. Bass was on his feet and in a fighting stance within seconds as Charlie barreled into the room with her sword nearly as quickly. They assessed the situation immediately and realized that the commotion was unnecessary. The intruder was, once again, just Aaron. The reason for the door slamming and reckless entry was because the man was attempting to balance two milk crates filled with reams of old dot matrix printer paper in his arms, extra sheets grasped between his teeth to prevent them from being blown away in the late morning breeze. Bass quickly divested him of one of the crates as Charlie closed the door behind him.

“Aaron, what’s going on?” Charlie asked as her adrenaline rush ebbed and she started to wipe the sleep from her eyes.

He put his crate on the ground and removed the sheets of paper from between his teeth. “The nano said they’d find a way to let me work on the code without electricity, but I had no idea…” His flustered stammering trailed off.

“What is all this crap?” Bass queried, taking in the thousands and thousands of pages covered top to bottom in hand written characters that he recognized as being from our standard alphanumeric alphabet, but not arranged into any type of discernable words.

“They had a man drop these off at my doorstep this morning. He… he looked like they had him brainwashed. Like when they took over Priscilla. But then as he walked away, he seemed to snap out of it and just looked confused.” Aaron’s obvious apprehension started to calm. “It’s the aberrations’ code. All of it. In hard copy.”

Bass shrugged and put the crate he was holding on the ground next to the other. “And what are you supposed to do with it like this?”

“I’m going to have to go through it line by line and see if I can find the virus and develop a way to counteract it.”

“This is good. Right?” Charlie asked. “Find the virus. Make a computer cure for it. How hard can it be?”

Aaron scoffed, “ _How hard can it be?”_ He gestured to the crates of paper. “Charlie, there are millions and millions of lines of code here, and the virus could be as simple as a few transposed letters in a single line. This is the kind of thing that would normally take days to find using computers with virus hunting software. I can’t even begin to fathom how arduous this will be to do by hand and on paper. It will take me weeks or more.”

Charlie’s eyes and brain already began to ache with just the thought of sitting around carefully reading through each line of that writing, but she offered anyway, “How can we help?”

“Unless either of you can read ASCII…” Aaron’s query was met with a pair of blank stares. “I think I will have to do this part on my own.”

Charlie and Bass both exhaled relieved breaths, not as subtly as they had intended.

Appreciating Aaron’s overwhelmed expression, Bass clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, Crash and Burn… Time for you to get hacking.”

“That’s not…” Aaron muttered frustratedly. “Do you understand anything about computers?”

“Nope.” Bass smiled. “Pretty sure that’s why they brought you in on this one.”

Aaron just sighed and eyed the crates with dread. “I have to get back and start class for the day. Is it ok if I leave these here? They are pretty heavy and I don’t really want to drag them all the way back into town.”

“Aaron,” Charlie interrupted, “I thought you just said that this is going to take weeks to get through. We’ve only got 4 weeks, and you’re going to just hold off on this and go teach some little kids their ABCs?”

“If I don’t keep school going, people are going to know something’s up, and they will start asking questions. And the nano were pretty clear about this whole thing needing to stay secret. The late summer break starts in a week. I will come back and work on this every chance I get until then. In a week it will have my undivided attention.” Aaron promised.

“I hope that’s enough.” Bass said ominously, though he did seem to understand the importance of maintaining their secrecy.

Aaron just nodded and left.

Charlie disappeared into the kitchen momentarily as Bass threw his blanket back over the arm of the couch and stretched his stiff back. Charlie returned and tossed him some bread and a portion of the dried turkey. “Guess it’s time to get to work.” She smiled at him and tossed him his sword belt as he took a bite of his breakfast.


End file.
